The list of envious celebrity siblings living in the shadows of their more successful brothers and sisters is long, and the gap between different ends of the same gene pool is often more of a chasm than a short hop.

Stephen Baldwin, for example, has always come off as the runt of the litter amongst three brothers who’ve all achieved varying-but-impressive levels of success.

Then there’s Sylvester Stallone’s musician brother, Frank, who, despite achieving a hit single in 1983 when he contributed the song Far From Over to the Staying Alive soundtrack, has lived in relative obscurity whilst his ripped, and now über-Botoxed, brother is a household name.

But few people live in a shadow quite as tall as the one that actor Eric Roberts has cast upon him by his little sister Julia.

Julia Roberts is one of the highest-paid actresses in Hollywood. Her 2003 performance in Mona Lisa Smile landed her a cool $25 million, and her net worth is estimated at a tidy $140 million. The exquisite Pretty Woman star and Oscar winner (for 2000’s Erin Brockovich) has also been named as one of People magazine’s 50 most beautiful people in the world 11 times, a record shared only by Halle Berry. And then there’s her big-brother, Eric...

Nine years her senior, the 53-year-old actor has become something of a B-grade movie legend. Despite the fact that the karate movie Best of the Best and its sequel (both of which also starred Sean Penn’s late brother Chris) were popular amongst the young ’uns in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Roberts is best known for clangers like The Prophecy II and DOA: Dead or Alive and a string of TV appearances, most of which you’ve never heard of.

In fact, he’s reached a certain level of ironic awesomeness thanks to his perseverance in the realm of straight-to-video movie endeavours. Akon featured him in his music video for Smack That, which featured Eminem. The Killers also included him in their video for Mr. Brightside, and Mariah Carey has done so too. Twice.

Regardless of whether he ever reaches the A-list, though, we’ll always have a soft spot for Mr Roberts. After all, he does have a mean roundhouse kick...