Odd Ways Of Recognizing An Actor

Cafe Society
1

We watched Unknown the other night (s’ok…decent enough suspense flick for the most part, as long as you don’t think too hard on a couple of silly plot points), and in one scene an elderly character was reaching for some papers with a tremor in his hand. My immediate thought was “Huh…that hand tremor was exactly like the hand tremor that Hitler had when taking off his glasses in all those Downfall parodies. It doesn’t really look like the same guy, but since the actor from Downfall probably doesn’t go around looking like Hitler, I suppose it could be him”.

After the movie was over, I took a look on IMDB, and sonuvabitch – Bruno Ganz, Ernst Jürgen in Unknown, Adolf Hitler in Downfall. Recognized by the way he twitched his hand.

Anyone else pick out someone as playing multiple roles by way of something like this?

2

For me, always and forever the angel Damiel in Wings of Desire.

I’ll have to think on your question. I know I’ve recognized actors by voice, but I can’t recall specific examples at the moment.

3

That dude with the jiggly eyes.

4

I tend to recognize voices before anything else. I can’t think of any examples right now, but there have been countless times I’ve gone ‘Hey, that’s <blah blah>!’ in shocked recognition after hearing someone speak, while my husband stares at me and goes ‘Duh’. For some reason this tends to apply more to male actors than female ones, hrm…