Uh… guys? Zombie thread.
Yeah, but it’s a fun one. Alex Karras also went on to play Webster’s dad in the TV show of the same name, and Dick Butkus played the guy who owned the shop downstairs and was pretty good in that role too.
Two that haven’t been mentioned are Justin Timberlake, who was better that one might think in Alpha Dog and Adam “Adrock” Horowitz from the Beastie Boys who was in Lost Angels and the sublime Roadside Prophets.
The “Hanson brothers” pretty much Slapshot a hit and they were just hockey players.
Also I was fond of the performance by Martin Scorcese’s mother in Casino and I beleive she was also in Goodfellas
Wilhelmenia Fernandez did a fine job playing the opera diva in Diva.
Marky Mark rapper morphed into Mark Wahlberg, respected actor.
Jerry Orbach was a song-and-dance man before Prince of the City.
[unrelated]Am I the only one to notice that Tom Waits & Ron Perlman have never been phtotgraphed together?[/unrelated]
Au contraire. See post 89.
Just saw **James Carville ** as the governor in “The Assassination of Jesse James…” – great acting!
Zombie, schmombie. This is Cafe Society, where we don’t discriminate against the undead. Except Patrick Swayze.
Some earlier thoughts on the matter from this thread:
You thwart me at every turn my friend. Don’t make me turn this into a Justin Timberlake Haiku thread. 
Promises, promises… 
Keith Richards in Pirates 3
Justin Timberlake was also fantastic in Black Snake Moan, and pretty good in Southland Tales. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a note of his music, but I certainly respect him as an actor.
One that can be seen in the theaters right now is Dillon Freasier, who plays Daniel Day-Lewis’s son in There Will Be Blood. The casting director went around to schools and asked the principal if they could recommend “an old soul in a young boy’s body” and one of them said “I know exactly who you’re looking for” and introduced her to Dillon. He’s so good in the role!
Sydney Pollack started out as an actor, on TV. His first film role was in War Hunt (1961), a very good film that I’m shocked isn’t more well-known, considering it was also Robert Redford’s first movie, as well as Tom Skerritt’s first movie. Pollack had directed some TV episodes (The Fugitive, The Alfred Hitchcock Hour, Ben Casey) but his first feature directing job was in 1965 with the tense and well-made The Slender Thread, starring Anne Bancroft as a woman who’s just taken pills and Sidney Poitier as a suicide hotline worker who has to keep her on the phone talking while the authorities try to track her down.
Nicole Kidman has an Oscar and you can’t tell me she’s any kind of actor.
Most of the cast of Cidade de Deus (City of God) were actually recruited from the neighboring favelas (slums), including a few from the actual City of God. Many had been or are still gangsters. Phenomenal job from most of them, though of course, the material is pretty close to their own lives. Still, faking it convincingly is well worthy of praise.
Funny that you should mention City of God… I just came into the thread to mention Brazilian musician Seu Jorge, who was one of the featured actors in City of God and also had a great role in The Life Aquatic.
Oh, and I’d also like to add **Glen Hansard ** and **Marketa Irglova ** in last year’s fantastic film Once. Neither had ever really acted before and were originally signed to just do the music. They had such great chemistry that the director made them the stars of the movie.
Ditto Juliette Lewis
He was very funny as Dustin Hoffman’s agent in Tootsie. Didn’t too badly in a very different role in Eyes Wide Shut, either.
David Lynch played a kinda funny, hard-of-hearing FBI supervisory agent in Fire Walk With Me, and did OK in the role.
**Oprah Winfrey ** was great in “The Color Purple.”