I keep thinking he’s Will Forte’s less famous brother.
Does voice acting count?
Way back when I was playing the video game Gabriel Knight- Sins Of The Fathers, a butler showed up. His voice was instantly recognizable as the great Tim Curry. I had no doubt it was him. I wondered if he did voices for anbody else in the game. He voiced the lead character. A fortyish very British man was providing the voice of a twenty something guy with a New Orleans accent and he had done such a fantastic job that I had not recognized him. It is a great game. I have replayed it many times. I will always be in awe of Curry’s performance.
PBS has shown two seasons of a British crime drama Annika. It’s really good, you should definitely check it out.
There is a recurring character introduced in season 1 who seemed vaguely familiar. I checked and the actor is Paul McGann, who played the Eighth incarnation of Doctor Who in the 1995 made-for-tv movie / backdoor-pilot-that-did-not-succeed. I wouldn’t have ever figured it out just by memory.
Speaking of video game voice acting, it was probably on my umpteenth play through of Portal 2 when I finally realized that the voice of Cave Johnson was JK Simmons.
When I first saw The Umbrella Academy, I immediately recognized Robert Sheehan, since he was basically playing and older version of the same character as he did in Misfits.
You know The Big Lebowski?
Imagine my surprise when I realized this sweet, affectionate character on Severance was played by the same guy who was The Jesus. I don’t think the two roles could be any more different. What an actor.
(link to YouTube, NSFW language)
I did not realize until someone pointed it out that the actor who played the “rogue electrician” in the Seinfeld episode “The Frogger”, and the guy from the hilarious Volkswagen “Unpimp Your Auto” ads, was none other than Peter Stormare, probably best known as Gaear Grimsrud (Steve Buscemi’s character’s accomplice) from Fargo. I totally did not recognize that it was the same actor in all three of those roles.
How about singers?
When I was younger, I was constantly surprised to find that famous songs from completely different bands were all sung by Steve Winwood. “Can’t Find My Way Home”? Winwood. “Gimme Some Lovin’”? Winwood. “Higher Love”? Winwood! My Boomer dad and I had a running joke that every time I didn’t recognize the singer of a classic rock song, it had to be Steve Winwood.
I didn’t recognize Charlene Tilton in the recent reboot of Dallas until I heard someone call her “Lucy.”
I never would have guessed that the woman who was the mother of the kidnapped girl in Silence of the Lambs was the alcoholic daughter of “The Commodore” in one of the last episodes of the original Columbo until I saw her name (Diane Baker) in the credits. (She was also the hot princess the IMF had to rescue in a three-part episode of Mission: Impossible.)
I did not at all recognize Leonardo di Caprio as the handicapped kid in What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?
The first time I saw The Magnificent Ambersons, I was wracking my brain trying to figure out who the beautiful young woman was. I knew I knew her from someplace, but I couldn’t think where. Finally, she turned to look sideways at Joseph Cotten out from under a little hat with a veil, and I recognized the eyes of the Queen of Egypt. “Holy crap, it’s Anne Baxter!” She couldn’t have been older than 19 at the time. (She looked even younger in Angel on My Shoulder and Yellow Sky, and I didn’t realize who she was until I read the credits.)
You’ll be happy to know that a re-illustrated version was published as a graphic novel a few years back.
(Mr. Weir even notes, in the forward, that “I can’t draw.”)
And my copy should be arriving today. I had seen something about it a few months ago (it might have been here on the Dope, but I can’t say for sure) and added it to my Amazon Wish List. Then when I was putting together an order for some things I needed I looked through my WL and decided to add it to the order.
At the end of Dallas Buyers Club, Fight Club, and House of Gucci, I remember saying, “Wait, that was Jared Leto?” He kind of disappears into his character.
Not quite the same thing as noticing an actor. Lately my algorithm has been showing me clips of John Green who is the author of the non-fiction book Everything is Tuberculosis. Seems like a fascinating book but I never heard of him before. It wasn’t until he was introduced on The Daily Show that I realized he was an extremely successful fiction author. He wrote The Fault in Our Stars and other books.
I’d been watching Daredevil on Disney+ for a while before I realized that the actor who played the Kingpin (Vince D’Orofino) had played one of the detectives on Law and Order.
I was playing Castlevania: Lord of Shadows and thought Dracula’s voice sounded familiar, turned out it was Robert Carlyle the actor who played Rumplestilskin on Once Upon a Time
When I heard Ben Schwartz in Sonic the Hedgehog his voice sounded so familiar I had to look it up. He’d played Raphael in one of the recent versions of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
If you like him, check out the Vlog brothers on YouTube.
I’m a fan of his brother Hank, myself.
But I did add the Tuberculosis book to my Wishlist.
Musically I’ve had that happen a lot with Adrian Belew. On hearing his unique playing style on Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, King Crimson, et al I went decades before connecting all of the dots of the many people/bands he’s worked on.
Until I looked her up on IMdB, I never would have guessed that Joyce Barnaby in Midsomer Murders (Jane Wymark) was innocent little Morwenna Chynoweth in the original Poldark series.
My daughter was really into the YA everybody has cancer genre for awhile. She loved The Fault in Our Stars. I passed on the book and movie.
If it’s a British series, I just automatically figure that the person was in GOT. Everybody was in GOT.
If they weren’t in Midsomer Murders.