Edit: Whoops. The actor, being the star of the film, was definitely in more than one scene. May be back with better answer.
Speaking of Apocalypse Now, Robert Duvall. Edit: (I got swooped!)
I’m not getting your point. Was this thread supposed to be about non-stars? If so, then I’d nominate Bronson Pinchot (as Serge) for stealing nearly the entire movie in his scene in the art gallery in Beverly Hills Cop.
The point of the OP is for characters that only appear in one (or very few) scenes, not are the main character that spends hours on screen.
Guess I missed the point. I’d also nominate Brando’s scene in Apocalypse Now: “Are you an assassin? A grocery clerk sent to collect a bill?” While the character is referred to throughout the film, he doesn’t appear until the end.
Also, a very young Brad Dourif in his ultimate scene with Nurse Ratched (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), when he is so badly shamed that he reverts to stuttering. While all of the “nuts” appear on screen throughout the film, this scene clearly shines.
Exactly. I’m hard-pressed to think of a thread where so many people have completely ignored the OP altogether.
Heh. Happens in the BBQ Pit a lot.
The wording was a bit vague, I guess. For me, anyway.
Sean Connery in Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves.
Except in this case it’s to the film’s detriment, as in the 30 seconds he has onscreen he shows us how the lead role *should *have been played.
Excellent–I get to be the first to mention Hugh Jackman in X-Men: First Class!
It’s not even him, but: Schwarzenegger in T4.
Everyone in the theater went nuts.
Well this one’s kind of obscure to modern audiences, but if you have ever seen Wild River (a 1960 film starring Montgomery Clift, about the displacements caused by a TVA dam), Barbara Loden absolutely lights up the screen for the few minutes she appears. Seeing the movie on TV I was so struck by her performance that I looked her up on IMDb. It turns out that I was not the only one impressed by Miss Loden in the role. Elia Kazan, having seen that performance, made her his “protegé,” a prelude (naturally) to marrying her.
On a related note, I’ve always been amused by people who bitch about Robin Hood as played by Costner not having much of an English accent, but not having a problem with Richard the Lionheart speaking English with a Scottish accent…
… or for that matter speaking English, period. Richard the Lionheart didn’t speak English. He was French.
I don’t know that I’d go that far. His mother was from Aquitaine and she would have spoken one of the Occitan dialects, his father was Anglo-Norman and would have spoken some form of Old Norman. He did speak the Old French spoken in the court at Paris, but it appears his his mother’s Occitan language was his primary tongue.
Many people often don’t recognize that when the Norman conquest happened the Normans were not analogous to French. Really “French” people didn’t exist yet, France was a collection of different languages and political units in 1066, not a unified country. While the Old Norman spoken by William the Conqueror had some degree of mutually understandability with the language spoken in Île-de-France (they were both considered *langue d’oïl), *Old Norman was notable for being influenced by the Scandinavian raids and settlements in Northern France.
Further 100 years later the Norman nobility would have been speaking a more Anglo-Norman dialect that would have been differentiated from the original Norman dialect.
However it was during Richard the Lionheart’s generation that mainstream “court French” became the language of educated people and the language of the court in England (prior to that it was Anglo-Norman or Old Norman), because of heavy intermarriage with nobility related to the King of France and originating from regions closer to Paris.
robert shaw as henry VIII in man for all seasons
harvey keitel as the wolf in pulp fiction
simon oakland as the detective in psycho
james woods as the prosecutor in chaplin
bob fosse as the snake in the little prince
john mcgiver as the pimp in midnight cowboy
Speaking of Midnight Cowboy, Sylvia Miles was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress for her role in the film, and was on screen for a total of less than 4 minutes. And that’s one of the shortest performances to ever received a nomination.
And amazingly enough, after all that, in Richard the Lionheart’s day there were still Saxon nationalists trying to drive out the Normans! I know that 'cause I saw Ivanhoe on Masterpiece Theater.