Simon Thompson with ten incredible character actors who are guaranteed to elevate any film…
If movies and football have one thing in common it’s the fact that whilst having star names to get people in the building is all well and good, it’s what you have to bring off the bench that can make or break you. For every Jack Nicholson, Meryl Streep, Denzel Washington, Stallone, Tom Cruise or Robert De Niro you need a John Cazale, a Carl Weathers, or a Joe Pesci to balance things out.
I have chosen the ten actors that are in this list because I’m always happy to see their names in the credits before the movie starts, but I’m aware that is a very personal choice…
John C. McGinley
If you need someone to play a complete uncompromising bastard in a movie, John C. McGinley is one of the first names anyone will mention. Skilled at both drama and comedy, McGinley has lent himself to supporting roles in some of the finest action movies and dramas of the 1980s/1990s such as Platoon, Point Break, Se7en and The Rock, as well as to comedies such as Mike Judge’s Office Space.
Although he’s primarily known for his portrayal of the cuttingly misanthropic Dr Cox in the medical sitcom Scrubs, a part that he was born to play, McGinley is somebody who can handle yelling at Keanu Reeves or playing stifling middle management with ease.
With an ability to shout with the best of them and always ready with a concise and insulting putdown, John C. McGinley’s characters are the embodiment of the lovable bastard trope.
Carl Weathers (1948-2024)
In an ideal world if you were to look up the word legendary in the dictionary, a picture of Carl Weathers would be there. A former NFL linebacker turned actor, Carl Weathers’s physical presence meant that, like many other NFL stars turned actors, his size stood him in good stead, at the least, to have a solid career playing henchman types.
Weathers, however, was far too skilled a performer for that, and from his pitch perfect casting as Rocky Balboa’s brash arch-rival Apollo Creed in Rocky (a role he would reprise up until the fourth instalment), to supporting roles in Predator, as well as leading parts in movies such as the eternally under appreciated Action Jackson – Weather’s reputation as an action movie legend is very much set in stone.
It’s his comedy chops, however, that go under the radar though, from playing Adam Sandler’s mentor Chubbs Peterson in Happy Gilmore, to playing a cheap-pisstake version of himself in Arrested Development (easily one of my favourite sitcoms of all time). It’s in Arrested Development, where you see him completely holding his own with a comedic talent like David Cross, that you truly realise how gifted a comic actor Carl Weathers was.
With a funny bone the size of Apollo Creed’s ego and innate comedic timing, Carl Weathers truly got a stew going in almost every project he was in.
Claude Rains ( 1889-1967)
British actors playing the bad guy is a long standing tradition in Hollywood, with some examples from relatively recent history being the likes of Alan Rickman, Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, Gary Oldman, and Jeremy Irons – all providing masterclasses in villainy. Given the task of pointing to somebody who I would say got this tradition started however, that honour would go to Claude Rains.
After moving to America in the 1930s and making a name for himself playing the Invisible Man in Universal’s screen adaptation of the same name, only when he signed a long term contract with Warner Bros did he start to forge a career replete with legendary villainous performances. From Prince John in The Adventures of Robin Hood to the corrupt senator Paine in Mr Smith Goes To Washington, or playing a fugitive Nazi war criminal in Alfred Hitchcock’s Notorious, Rain’s impeccable diction and sophisticated appearance provided a template for the cosmopolitan bad guy that stars like Alan Rickman would take the mantle of decades later.
But, despite a career of mostly being type-cast, Rain’s showed he had outstanding range whenever he got the chance, such as his turn playing more sympathetic characters, like the schemer with the heart of gold, Louis Renault, in Casablanca and the title role of the Phantom in the Universal version of Phantom of the Opera.
With four Academy Award nominations for best supporting actor and a Tony, Rains could have easily been a leading man, but due to his collaborative nature he decided to use his skills to support the likes of James Stewart and Humphrey Bogart instead. It’s a testament to Rains’ ability that you can’t imagine Casablanca and Laurence Of Arabia (two of the greatest films ever made) without his presence, and if that’s not a ringing endorsement of his abilities then I don’t know what is.
Robert Forster (1941-2019)
Calm, yet authoritative, Robert Forster is one of those rare actors who would quietly make whatever movie he was in even better than it already was. Starting out with an absolute banger of a debut in Reflections of a Goldeneye, an adaptation of the Carson McCullers’s novel of the same name, alongside Marlon Brando and Elizabeth Taylor, he parlayed the rave reviews from his debut into leading man parts such as the conflicted camera man John Cassellis in Haskell Wexer’s New Hollywood classic Medium Cool.
Forster, sadly, suffered a career slump in the mid-1970s-early 1990s mainly starring in straight to video or limited release schlock that was sea levels below his talent and dignity. It wouldn’t be until 1997 that comeback deliverer extraordinaire Quentin Tarantino would cast Forster as bail bondsman Max Cherry in Jackie Brown, a performance that justifiably earned him rave reviews and a best supporting actor nomination.
Forster’s dynamic with fellow comeback star Pam Grier in the movie is a joy to watch and thankfully it made Hollywood casting agents everywhere realise what they had been missing all this time. Thanks to Tarantino, Forster ended up working extremely well again up until his tragic death in 2019, with roles in both David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive and Twin Peaks: The Return, as well as Alexander Payne’s The Descendants– introducing him to an entirely new generation of movie goers.
With a quiet professionalism and a steady consistency, Robert Forster could make even Maniac Cop III (a movie not even close to being a patch on the original) semi watchable.
Philip Baker Hall (1931-2022)
Philip Baker Hall’s raspy voice and knowing demeanour gave his acting a timeless quality that was extremely difficult to replicate. Starting out at the age of 30 and eking out a living mainly playing 1-2 episode tv characters on shows such as Miami Vice, as well as bit parts in movies such as Midnight Run and Say Anything, it wouldn’t be until the 1990s- by which point he was well into his 60s- that Phillip Baker Hall would start to become a recognisable name.
In 1993, when a young Santa Monica College student filmmaker by the name of Paul Thomas Anderson decided to cast Hall in his $10,000 short film Cigarettes and Coffee, a fruitful creative partnership was born. Anderson would then make the wise decision to cast Baker Hall in his feature length debut Hard Eight (1996) as the mysteriously sinister veteran gambler Sydney, who guides John C. Reilly’s lovable screw up character through the ins and outs of Vegas casinos.
Hard Eight’s immediate acclaim on the indie circuit made directors and critics start to notice Hall’s considerable abilities and he would go on to become one of the most in demand character actors of the next three and half decades, also continuing to work with Anderson on his other projects, such as Boogie Nights and Magnolia, two of the most acclaimed American movies of the 1990s.
Hall was equally adept at playing military men and cops, as shown by his work in films such as The Rock and Rush Hour, but it was his capacity for comedy that really set him apart from other actors of his type. With an utterly flat deadpan delivery, Hall could completely sell the ridiculous to an audience – as demonstrated by his guest appearance in Seinfeld, where he played a hardboiled library cop named Joe Bookman, determined to make Jerry return a copy of Tropic of Cancer he borrowed as a teenager.
The fact that, astoundingly, Hall could get through those scenes without cracking up once as well as the fact that this was the very same actor capable of playing a character like the monstrous sleazy gameshow Jimmy Gator in Magnolia, demonstrates Hall’s remarkable versatility. With his passing in 2022, American cinema has truly lost an actor who could provide wit and gravitas in equal measure.
Patricia Clarkson
Patricia Clarkson is the kind of actress that is so consistently good in whatever she’s starring in that her work tends to go under the radar. Through this combination of sheer quiet consistency as well as her proclivity for picking more offbeat indie projects, Clarkson has carved out a niche for herself as one of the finest character actors currently working.
Starting out her career in the mid-late 1980’s, Clarkson’s first noticeable role was her turn as Catherine Ness in Brian De Palma’s The Untouchables. With a combination of blonde hair and a deep, almost raspy voice, it didn’t take long for Clarkson to be seen as a new Bacall or Faye Dunaway by various studio executives.
As a result, Clarkson was constantly cast in the parts that those two actresses would have played had they been younger. Clarkson, to her eternal credit, realised that being typecast to that extent was an absolute drag on her career, and decided to eschew conventional stardom to pursue movies and tv show parts that actually appealed to her instead.
All I can say to that is, thank God that she did, as since the early 1990s Clarkson has provided fantastic supporting role work in mainstream Hollywood fare such as George Clooney’s excellent Good Night and Good Luck, Martin Scorsese’s Shutter Island, and Todd Haynes’s Douglas Sirk homage Far From Heaven, supporting parts on the small screen in shows such as Alan Ball’s family drama Six Feet Under, and in arthouse fare such as Lars Von Trier’s Dogville.
Clarkson’s well rounded performances in disparate parts such as a stuck up suburbanite in Far From Heaven, or an eccentric bohemian artist in Six Feet Under serve as both an exhibition of her sheer range as well as her ability to make any character her own.
Pam Grier
If I had to pick a word to describe Pam Grier’s career, the word that I would chose would be resilient. Grier first made a name for herself in the 1970s as one of the first female action stars in movie history, and along with other stars such as Richard Roundtree, Melvin Van Pebbles, Fred Williamson, and Ron O’Neal she helped to break new ground for black actors in Hollywood.
In her 1970’s apex, Grier was both an action star and a sex symbol, bringing her unique charisma to movies such as Coffy, Foxy Brown, and Friday Forster and making herself a back page tabloid fixture through being romantically linked with the likes of Kareem Abdul Jabbar and Freddie Prinze. As the 1970s became the 1980s however, Grier’s career, cruelly hit a standstill, with the actress being relegated to various supporting roles throughout the decade.
In the mid-1990s though, something truly remarkable happened for Grier. First she was given a substantial supporting role in Tim Burton’s ensemble B-Movie homage Mars Attacks in 1996, and then the movie that would buy her one of the great second acts in Hollywood fell right into her hands, Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown.
Tarantino, by this point, was the most exciting young director in Hollywood with two critical and commercial smash-hits under his belt in Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. The 33 year old could have made a movie about anything with any lead of his choosing, but as a childhood fan of Grier’s work he wanted to film an adaptation of Elmore Leonard’s Rum Punch with Grier, who hadn’t a starring role in almost 30 years by this point, as the lead.
To cut a long story short, Grier made one of the smartest decisions of her entire career by taking on the project, re-establishing herself to a new generation of fans, being nominated for a SAG award and a Saturn for her performance (I still can’t believe she didn’t get an academy nod) and hasn’t stopped working ever since its release. Given how much of a lost cause her career looked for well over a decade, Grier’s comeback has been nothing short of remarkable.
Alfred Molina
Alfred Molina’s long and prolific career, both in Britain and America, is truly something to behold. First gaining notice as the shady guide who betrays Indiana Jones at the beginning of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Molina has worked steadily since the early 1980s but it would be his performance in Stephen Frears’s Prick Up Your Ears (1987) as Kenneth Halliwell, the lover of playwright Joe Orton, that would truly make him a household name to audiences.
Molina’s turn as Halliwell is nothing short of exceptional, portraying the narcissistic and spurned Halliwell with a combination of wit, anger and underlying menace that never once becomes cartoonish. Even alongside an actor of Gary Oldman’s calibre, Molina almost steals the entire film practically every single time he is on screen – a fact that did not go unrecognised by various Hollywood types.
Although a classically trained Shakespearean actor who has had many a leading role on stage, Molina’s movie career more often than not has seen him playing one or two scene characters or villains.
Even when Molina is given a short amount of screen time, such as his performances in Jim Jarmusch’s Dead Man or in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights, he never fails to make an impression, with his short scene as the crazed drug dealer in Boogie Nights particularly being one of the greatest masterclasses in doing more with less this side of Christopher Walken’s sergeant character in Pulp Fiction.
In the 2000s, however, Molina would gain both critical acclaim for his roles in movies such as Chocolat and Frieda, and an entirely new audience due to his portrayal of the iconic Spider-Man villain Dr Otto Octavius (aka Dr Octopus) in Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man trilogy (2002-2007). It’s a monument to Molina’s love of acting that he doesn’t ever think the role is beneath him for a second, imbuing one of Spider-Man’s goofier villains from the comics with a sense of bitter pathos that adds enormously to why Spider-Man 2 is such a good movie in the first place.
Still steadily working both on the stage and the screen, as well as building a prolific voice acting career, it feels crazy to say that Molina deserves to be a far bigger household name than he actually is, given the sheer amount of movies he’s been involved in.
Keith David
If you don’t recognise Keith David’s face immediately, then you will absolutely recognise his voice. With a vocal quality that could best be described as somewhere between Zeus and James Earl Jones, Keith David has been steadily working since the late 1970s.
Although his list of supporting roles in live action are extremely impressive, having worked with directors of the calibre of John Carpenter, Clint Eastwood, Oliver Stone, Spike Lee, and Darren Aronofsky it’s through voice acting that David has truly made his name.
When you have a voice that could melt a kilogram’s worth of butter, you are practically guaranteed work, with voice acting being something that David has never stopped doing since the 1990s. I first became aware of him as a kid, through watching the animated series and borderline Star Trek reunion show Gargoyles, with his commanding performance as Goliath, the leader of a band of fish out of water medieval gargoyles navigating a then present day 1990s New York.
Since Gargoyles, David has lent his voice to numerous animated projects such as HBO’s adaptation of Todd Macfarlane’s Spawn, as the eponymous protagonist, and Henry Sellick’s Coraline, as well as to video games such as Halo and Mass Effect.
What makes David’s career stand out, however, is the fact that, given his dignified demeanour and the rich gravitas of his voice, he’s always willing to send himself up and lend his vocal talents to comedy roles both in live action or in voice acting. Using his voice for the ridiculous, such as a guest spot on Community, narrating Troy and Abed’s blanket-pillow civil war, has shown that David is as gifted a comedic performer as he is a dramatic one.
While of course not every single project that David has been involved in is an all-time classic, he’s still one of those rare performers who I will watch in pretty much anything – all the way up to him simply sitting in a room reading the Yellow Pages.
Peter Lorre (1904-1964)
Peter Lorre is a classic example of an incredibly versatile actor, given ample opportunity to showcase their versatility in one context, but once brought over to Hollywood are completely typecast in specific and restricted kind of parts (see Antonio Banderas and Jean Reno).
After starting out in experimental theatre in his adopted homeland of Austria, Lorre moved to Berlin and found himself working with Bertholdt Brecht in the late 1920s. As the decade drew to a close Lorre would begin to seek film work, bringing him to the attention of legendary German director Fritz Lang, who in one of the best castings in the history of cinema chose Lorre to play the insane child killer in his movie M.
M made Lorre in an instant household name on both sides of the Atlantic, however, as the Nazi party began to rise to power in Germany, Lorre, alongside the likes of Fritz Lang, Otto Preminger, and Max Ophuls fled the country owing to their Jewish heritage.
After a brief pit stop in the UK to work with Alfred Hitchcock in The Man Who Knew Too Much, giving a pitch perfect performance as an assassin, Lorre moved to America in the mid-1930s. Owing to his previous work, distinct, lilting yet gravely voice, and unconventional physical features, Lorre would be permanently stuck playing villains in almost every movie he starred in. From the murderous surgeon in Karl Freund’s Mad Love to his work in noir classics such as The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, to mocking his sinister image in Arsenic and Old Lace, Lorre gradually began to become sick of the parts allotted to him.
The only heroic character that Lorre ever got to play in Hollywood was the Japanese detective Mr Moto, where Lorre, with some of the most culturally sensitive makeup this side of Mickey Rooney played the title role nine times. To make matters even worse for Lorre, once the 1950s came around and Hollywood reverted to making lighter fare in a post-World War II cultural landscape, Lorre found the parts that he used to get with monotonous regularity hard to come by.
Hollywood was making less film noir due to even stricter tightening of the Hays Code, and the horror genre had moved on from the monsters and mad scientists of old to giant creature ‘b’ movies instead. After a brief return to Germany, Lorre would spend the final 12 years of his life and career in America mainly working in TV and radio or in supporting roles, where the parts he would get, such as the villainous Le Chifre in a teleplay of the first James Bond novel Casino Royale (also the first ever screen adaptation of Ian Fleming’s iconic British spy) being more of what he was asked to do before, but at a far less prestigious level.
The best of Lorre’s late career, however, came right at the end through his work with B-movie king Roger Corman, who cast him in two of his Edgar Allan Poe adaptations. In these final roles, with a director who clearly respected his talent, Lorre seemed to be in the process of resurrecting his sliding career before his tragic death at 59.
While the name Peter Lorre may not be one that younger audiences will know, his performances in M, Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, and Mad Love have inspired numerous homages and parodies in popular culture from Looney Tunes to Ren and Stimpy to The Addams Family, and even The Tick having a villain named The Guy Who Looks Just Like Peter Lorre – meaning that Lorre’s impact will continue to be felt for generations to come.
Who are your favourite character actors? Let us know on our socials @FlickeringMyth…
Simon Thompson
