The 29 biggest stars to successfully make the jump from TV to movies, ranked

Will Smith in "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."NBC

• Many have tried but few have succeeded: the move from TV to movies.
• We look at the top 29 stars who have transitioned from the small to the big screen and rank them.
• Will Smith, Jared Leto, Denzel Washington, and Michelle Williams all appear in the ranking.

TV has always been the obvious launching pad for actors to get into the movies, but it's a lot easier said than done.

For every TV star that has made the transition successfully there are hundreds that didn't get to the other side. And even for every Will Smith and Jared Leto who seamlessly moved to the next level, there are others like George Clooney and Melissa McCarthy who stuck around for a while on TV before finally getting the successful jump over.

But regardless of how they got there, this group has found a way to become bigger stars in movies than they were on the small screen.

Here we rank the 29 stars who successfully made the move from TV to movies: