Guide to Character Actors

[tzarinna]

Guide

For all kinds of reasons, actors don’t always vault towards the highest billing imaginable before falling into obscurity. One could have the physiognomy of Pete Postlethwaite, for instance, or be a bit too ethnic for the delicate sensibilities of Hollywood. Thus, character actors are born. In dozens of movies, during careers that span decades, they play small supporting roles—usually just out of the limelight, but always grabbing the most interesting roles. These men and women are essential parts of the cinematic experience; how else could we play Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon?

These are often the disturbing and eccentric characters, the ones Tom Hanks could never get away with playing. They unsettle us with their strangely familiar faces, and then provide that unpleasant jolt of recognition as we realize that the nice young Brit is now playing a sociopath hillbilly. Or they have cornered the market on one archetype, be it a nagging mother or a sleazy villain with a suspiciously un-American accent. So it is that one woman, Beulah Bondi, played Jimmy Stewart’s mother in no less than four films.

Character actors may not always get the headlines they deserve, but their fans know them, love them and, when we get the chance, sing their praises. For what could be more delightful than celebrating the obscure?

Best,
Stylus at the Movies


Found this article on imdb.

 

[Warhammer]

Nice find.
Gary Oldman, Delroy Lindo, and Miguel Ferrer are my favorites in that list.

 

[tzarinna]

Thanks.
I'm all about Oldman too.
Some of the others that I like from the list are:

Steve Buscemi
For the past two decades nobody has played creeps, neurotics, losers, geeks, and weirdoes better than Steve Buscemi. With his scrawny frame, milk-white skin, and narrow eyes, it was always unlikely that he’d star opposite Julia Roberts—in Fargo, a Midwestern prostitute famously describes him as “funny looking.” But funny looking or not, make no mistake: Buscemi is very, very good. Equally brilliant in roles showy (the volatile Mr. Pink in Reservoir Dogs) or subdued (The Big Lebowski’s put-upon Donnie), he remains one of the most reliable supporting players in independent film, and in recent years his willingness to go weird has earned the attention of people like Jerry Bruckheimer and Adam Sandler, who call on him to play comic-relief wackos in big-budget trash like Con Air and Mr. Deeds. Here’s hoping he finds more roles like Ghost World’s pathetic Seymour, Buscemi’s richest performance to date, and the closest he’s yet come to playing a romantic lead—albeit one who, in typically perverse fashion, despises most of the human race, and ends up sleeping with a teenager.
[Patrick McKay]

David Morse
His nice guys are few and far between—Jodie Foster’s shimmering mirage of a father in Contact, Melanie Griffith’s reassuring brother in Crazy in Alabama, Olshansky the ex-cop cabbie in the TV series “Hack,” Evan Rachel Wood’s well-meaning, volatile father Wade in last year’s Down in the Valley. His dense, looming physicality and leisurely growl make him a better bad guy, or more precisely, someone we once unwisely, fatally trusted. We see this in a sudden paralyzing rush—Geena Davis strapped to a water wheel in The Long Kiss Goodbye. In Dancer in the Dark, Morse steals the blind girl’s money, twists her name, gets her to kill him savagely in the film’s most harrowing scene. Often a dirty cop—as in 16 Blocks—his capacity for sudden, rapid movement always unnerves. In Disturbia, he’s inside that blond girl’s car in the parking garage on a sunny afternoon quicker than a snake. What dark energy will Morse bring to the father of our country, cast as Washington in next year’s TV miniseries “John Adams”?
[Nancy Keefe Rhodes]

James Cromwell
Cromwell is one of those character actors who has appeared in such a volume of film and television, he’s almost become a superstar. He first made an impression (and earned an Oscar nomination) in Babe, as the compassionate Farmer Hoggett, but since then is usually seen onscreen as an authority figure of questionable repute, such as the curmudgeonly Prince Philip of The Queen, or the deeply corrupt Irish cop Dudley Smith in Curtis Hanson’s peerless L.A. Confidential (where he committed one of the most shocking film twists in recent memory). Cromwell is also a venerable TV guest star, including a stint on “ER” and “24,” and most memorably as George Sibley, Ruth’s unstable second husband on “Six Feet Under.” There, he took a role so easy to take to award-baiting, hyperbolic extremes, and instead managed to lend sympathy to a deeply frustrating, flawed figure with his quiet, consistent work over two seasons. Although often typecast, Cromwell is a tireless workhorse who brings a stature and prestige to even his most throwaway appearances.
[David Sims]


I know there's more folks that were missed but they escape my brain.