Sarah Wayne Callies was hot off of Prison Break when she landed the role of Lori Grimes. She appeared on the first three seasons, before her character was killed off the show. She went on to star on Colony and the Prison Break revival, as well as Unspeakable, Council of Dads and the upcoming ABC show The Company You Keep.
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Chandler Riggs also broke out as Carl Grimes on the show, playing Rick’s son until his shocking death in Season 8. The decision to kill him off was a surprising one, since the character survived the entire comic series. Riggs went on to appear on A Million Little Things and has also released music under the name Eclipse.
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Laurie Holden starred as Andrea for the show’s first season, before she was surprisingly killed off in Season 3 in what was — at the time — one of the biggest departures from the source material. She later appeared in Dumb and Dumber To, Chicago Fire, Major Crimes, The Americans and most recently played Crimson Countess on Season 3 of The Boys.
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Jon Bernthal broke out big playing Shane Walsh on the show’s first two seasons and appeared for one-off episodes in Seasons 3 and 9. He went on to play The Punisher on Netflix’s Marvel shows, including his own spinoff, and We Own This City and appeared in films including The Wolf of Wall Street, Baby Driver, Wind River, The Unforgivable and Ford v. Ferrari. He currently stars on American Gigolo.
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IronE Singleton appeared as T-Dog throughout the show’s first three seasons, before the character was killed in the prison. Singleton went on to appear on Franklin & Bash, The Underground Railroad and the 2020 movie Safety.
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The Walking Dead was Steve Yeun’s first starring role, before he was brutally killed off by Negan in the show’s Season 7 premiere. He followed up TWD by starring in an executive producing Minari, which earned him an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor — becoming the first Asian American to receive the honor in the process. He also voices the titular character in Invincible, also based on a Robert Kirkman comic series, and appeared in Nope. He has two children with wife Joana Pak, who he married in 2016.
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Norman Reedus came off the Boondock Saints films to play Daryl Dixon on The Walking Dead, starring on the show as the character through its entire run. He also has a spinoff coming titled, simply, Daryl Dixon. While on TDW, he also launched Ride with Norman Reedus on AMC and starred in the Death Stranding video game. He met Diane Kruger while filming the movie Sky and the two have been together since 2016. They share one daughter, Nova.
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Michael Rooker starred as Daryl’s brother Merle Dixon for the show’s first three seasons and reprised his role for the prequel video game The Walking Dead: Survival Instinct. He went on to play Yondu in the two Guardians of the Galaxy movies, appeared in Brightburn, Fantasy Island, Love and Monsters, The Suicide Squad and F9, as well as shows True Detective and Creepshow.
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Melissa McBride made an impression in Frank Darabont’s The Mist before joining the series as Carol Peletier. She’s expected to survive the show, as she was initially announce as Norman’s costar in a spinoff, before dropping out of the show. That being said, she and Reedus have still teased her possible appearance. She’s kept a pretty low profile outside of TWD, appearing mainly in TWD-related projects and two films, The Happys and The Reconstruction of William Zero.
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The Walking Dead was Madison Lintz’s first job in Hollywood, playing Carol’s daughter Sophia through the show’s first season … before disappearing and reappearing in Hershel’s barn as a zombie in Season 2. Lintz, now 23, went on to star on Bosch and appeared in the films After and Parental Guidance.
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Jeffrey DeMunn was already one of Frank Darabont’s biggest collaborators before the director cast him as Dale Horvath on TWD. He starred on the show’s first two seasons, before going on to appear on Mob City, The Good Wife, Divorce and Billions, on which he still appears. He also appeared in the 2017 movie Marshall.
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Jeryl Prescott Sales appeared as Jacqui throughout the show’s first season but blew up with the CDC. She went on to appear on multiple episodes of Ray Donovan, Nancy Drew, All the Queen’s Men and Powers and was a regular on the 2019 Swamp Thing series.
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Juan Gabriel Pareja also appeared in The Mist before getting cast as Morales on the first season of The Walking Dead. His character made a surprise return in Season 8 as one of the Saviors, before being killed by Daryl. He later appeared on Chicago Red, GBI and 9-1-1.
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Emma Bell appeared in just a handful of Season 1 as Andrea’s younger sister Amy. She went on to star in Final Destination 5 and the Dallas revival series, as well as episodes of Arrow, Designated Survivor and NCIS. She got married to Camron Robertson in 2018 and the two welcomed a daughter together in 2020.
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Noah Emmerich appeared in the final episodes of the show’s first season as CDC doc Edwin Jenner. He also appeared in an Easter egg in the series finale of The Walking Dead: World Beyond. He later starred on Space Force, Suspicion, Dark Winds, The Americans and Billions, also directing episodes of the latter two shows. He most recently appeared in The Good Nurse.
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Addy Miller played the little zombie girl in the show’s very first episode and was brought back to play a very similar looking walker in a Season 8 episode in 2017, the show’s 100th episode. Miller, now 22, also appeared in Dark Places, Nashville and the 2022 films Behind You and Abandoned.
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