I know we’ve done this before, but it’s happened to me twice in the last few weeks. You see someone in a film (perhaps an older one) and look him/her up and find that he/she is better known to you in another role, but you didn’t recognize him/her.
The most recent case for me was watching Broadcast News, and I thought I recognized Bobby, the geeky video editor. (In the scene in which Holly Hunter is rushing to finish a news story at the last minute, all the pressure is on him and Holly has the memorable line, “Bobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobbybobby.”)
He reminded me of Philip Seymour Hoffman, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t. But when I looked him up, I realized why he seemed familiar: he is Boston Legal’s Jerry Espenson (aka Christian Clemenson).
The other case happened month or two ago. I was watching There’s Something About Mary and I got to wondering if maybe the actor playing Cameron Diaz’s retarded brother Warren was really a retarded actor. To my surprise he was actually Deadwood tough guy Dan Dougherty, aka W. Earl Brown. That was a real surprise, more so than the other case, because Brown’s two performances were so different.
So when were you surprised to find that two roles were played by the same actor?
My weirdest and most exciting was discovering that Rube, the gruff, beloved reaper from Dead Like Me was none other than Inigo Montoya! Two loves, united in one perfect moment.
I was dumfounded to learn that Anthony Michael Hall, who played numerous skinny teen dweebs in films of the 1980s, grew up to be the gorgeous guy who stars in the TV version of The Dead Zone. I saw the name “Anthony Michael Hall” and thought “Gee, I wonder if he’s related to that little geek from Sixteen Candles.”
Similarly, when I first saw Jerry O’Connell on Sliders, I didn’t recognize him as the tubby kid from Stand by Me.
Makes me wonder whether some of the dorky guys from my youth may have turned into hunks.
I just saw Across the Universe this weekend, and thought Sadie’s manager had a familiar voice, even though he only had a line or two. Turns out he was played by James Urbaniak, who does the voice of acerbic Dr. Venture on The Venture Bros. (and I didn’t even know what Urbaniak looked like before!)
Captain Stottlemeyer on Monk, was the killer in Silence of The Lambs.
I would’ve never known if I hadn’t been flipping through the chanels after watching Monk, and landed on a showing of Silence of The Lambs, right when he’s opening his door to Clarice.
There’s actually a website devoted to this phenomenon (or at least to a listing of ubiquitous character actors who aren’t quite household names). Unfortunately it looks like they’ve now removed all images from the site, no doubt due to warning-shot letters from copyright lawyers. (Which sort of defeats the purpose, since the “hey, it’s that guy!” epiphany is generally inspired by seeing the actor’s face.)
Two of my personal favorites are the late J. T. Walsh, who apparently inspired the site, and Richard Jenkins, whose recognizability definitely received a boost from his role on “Six Feet Under,” but whom I bet most people still wouldn’t be able to name if they saw him.
After watching 3 or 4 episodes of “Torchwood” on BBC America, I realized that Eve Myles, who plays Gwen, also played Gwynneth the maid in the “Unquiet Dead” episode of “Doctor Who” way back in the early part of the first season.
I was surfing the TV waves the other night, playing “I can name that movie in fifteen seconds” game, and came across “Crazy in Alabama.” Easy to recognize from Melanie Griffith (I can remember when she was cute) and her bloated lips, but the “It’s that guy!” moment came when I recognized Meatloaf as the sheriff.
I was watching Broken Arrow a while ago, and that young government guy (“I don’t know what’s scarier, losing a nuclear weapon or that it happens so often there’s actually a term for it.”) looked familiar. I had to look him up on IMDb. His name is Frank Whaley, but I’ll always remember him as
“Check out the big brain on Brett!”
from Pulp Fiction.
I was very surprised to discover that the prosecuting attorney from The Untouchables is also one of the bosses in Cool Hand Luke (“There’s no playing grab-ass or fighting in the building. You got a grudge against another man, you fight him Saturday afternoon. Any man playing grab-ass or fighting in the building spends a night in the box.”) and is also the cartoonish, redneck sheriff in Live and Let Die and The Man With the Golden Gun, Clifton James.
I watched Wagons East recently, and spent a fair amount of time staring at one particular balding character thinking that he reminded me of Data for some reason, but didn’t look at all like Brent Spiner (who played Data).
It was the guy who played the hologram doctor on Star Trek Voyager. I can’t tell you his name, but I recognized it when I saw it in the credits (I’d figured out the connection long before).
Try to catch an old episode of Benson someday, it’ll drive you nuts.
A pre-Trek Brent Spiner had an occasional recurring role on Night Court as patriarch of a family of hard-luck rednecks in the big city. Took me a while to recognize that one.
Sometime between seeing Firefly and Season 5 of Angel (so probably summer of 2004) I got Full Metal Jacket from Netflix. When they got to the part with the unit in Vietnam, I couldn’t figure out why Animal Mother looked so familiar until I looked him up on IMDB. I blame the fact that I’d never seen Jayne without his facial hair. If I had seen him in his “clean shaven” look he had as the Senior Partner’s liason in Angel before watching FMJ, I probably would’ve gotten it faster.
And then some time later, I happened to catch Independence Day on TV, and realized that Baldwin was also the Major giving the pilots a “crash course in modern avianics”.
I had a couple “that guy” moments in this week’s Heroes as well. In the Irish gang holding Peter, I immediately spotted Malcom from Enterprise (I’ve been getting Enterprise discs from Netflix recently). But the leader was causing some recognition I couldn’t pin down, until someone pointed it out in the Heroes thread here on the SDMB: he was one of the space monkeys in Fight Club. “In death, we have a name. His name is Robert Paulson…”
I posted about this in the Heroes thread, but I just realized yesterday that the main member of the Really Bad Irish Accent Gang in the last 2 shows was one of the “Space Monkeys” in Fight Club, the one who coined the phrase “His name is Robert Paulson.”
It had been driving me crazy for two weeks where I knew him from.
Recently watching Hot Fuzz, I was trying to figure out where I knew the sweet little old flower shop lady from. Suddenly I realized - she’s the Plasmavore from Doctor Who episode Smith & Jones.
I was recently watching an episode of Hill Street Blues when it dawned on me that the leader of the Irish “Shamrocks” gang was none other than a very young David Caruso !
And, speaking of CSI:Miami , isn’t Horatio’s newly discovered son the same kid who played Jack’s nephew last season on 24 ?
Dennis Haysbert (The Unit, 24 ) was the Hispanic second baseman in Major League .
Cool Hand Luke is one of those movies with a cast that seems to be entirely populated with “Hey, It’s That Guy(s)!” In addition to the star Paul Newman and best supporting oscar winner George Kennedy, there’s Strother Martin (“What we have here is failure to communicate.”), JD Cannon, Harry Dean Stanton, Dennis Hopper, Wayne Rogers, Joe Don Baker (“Mitchell!”) and a lot of other faces that are familiar even if their names aren’t.