He also played Jack Simmons in The Dirt Bike Kid, Billy in Death Valley, and Messy Marvin in a series of commercials for Hershey's Syrup in the 1980s.

The older Billingsleys, Dina and Win, had the briefest acting careers, working mostly in commercials, with minor guest spots on television shows.

[4] Peter's older brother, Neil, began playing Danny Walton on the daytime soap opera Search for Tomorrow in 1975 and has had numerous roles in commercials and guest shots on TV series.

"[citation needed] He was best known for a series of commercials for Hershey's chocolate syrup in which he portrayed the character Messy Marvin.

In 1982, Billingsley starred in several features, including Death Valley, Massarati and the Brain, and the made-for-TV movie Memories Never Die with Lindsay Wagner and his sister, Melissa.

[10] In 1984, Billingsley starred in an adaptation of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency with Dick Van Patten and Gabe Kaplan, a special Thanksgiving episode of the PBS series WonderWorks.

[13][14] He appeared in The Dirt Bike Kid (for which he won a Young Artist Award),[9] Russkies, and Beverly Hills Brats.

[1] The early 1990s had Billingsley tackling older roles such as a would-be athlete who gets hooked on steroids in the CBS Schoolbreak Special The Fourth Man.

[15] His next Schoolbreak Special appearance was in The Writing on the Wall (1994), starring Hal Linden as a rabbi who teaches three boys about the horrors of intolerance after they are caught defacing his home, temple, and car with swastikas and antisemitic graffiti.

[9][16] The most notable of his later film acting assignments was Arcade (1993), in which he starred as a teenage "virtual reality" addict; he worked as the post-production supervisor, credited as Peter Michaelsen.

He was an executive producer for the Universal Pictures production The Break-Up in which he had a small acting role, as Andrew, appearing alongside frequent collaborator Jon Favreau.