Saving Private Ryan featured Dennis Farina, Ted Danson, Paul Giamatti, Nathan Fillion, Bryan Cranston, Leland Orser, and others in bit parts like that.
He’ll always be Lovejoy to me!
Most of them were well known or well regarded when they appeared in that movie. In Band of Brothers it was mostly unknown young actors who happened to get cast together and then went on to much bigger things.
Also Jamie Bamber, Stephen Graham, Jason O’Mara, Dominic Cooper, Andrew Scott. There is a very quick shot of that little known actor Tom Hanks. Of course Colin Hanks has a major role in one episode in one of his early roles. The cast of young future stars is because of the big casting call for young male British actors who could do a convincing American accent. Americans were cast in some of the bigger roles. Everything else was handled by more local actors who for the most part did a remarkable job with the accents.
Young (naked) Tom Hardy is barely recognizable.
The lady scientist in “Death of a Unicorn” also starred in the video “Turn Down For What,” Sunita Mani.
The video makes me laugh every time, and is slightly NSFW:
Inasmuch as the show had a main character, he was played by a British actor (Damien Lewis) doing an excellent American accent.
Which is why I said “some” of the bigger roles.
I don’t know the exact order on the call sheet but I would place these actors as having the major roles, Americans: Ron Livingston, Donnie Wahlberg, Michael Cudlitz, Frank John Hughes, Kirk Acevedo, Matthew Settle, Neal McDonough, Eion Bailey, Richard Speight, Scott Grimes, David Schwimmer. The Brits: Damien Lewis, Rick Warren, Dexter Fletcher, Ross McCall, Shane Taylor, Nicholas Aaron, Robin Laing, Craig Heaney. Almost all of those the other lesser roles were from the UK. There can be debate as to which is a major and minor role. I picked those that had significant dialogue over multiple episodes.
Damien Lewis is a great actor and always does a great American accent. Unfortunately they handed over an entire episode to Marc Warren to carry and he does a horrible American accent.
Oof, completely forgot Stephen Graham, who was hilarious bouncing off Jason Statham in Snatch.
Tom Hardy showed up in a rare (for BoB) sex scene and looked almost emaciated.
Never saw that video before and I was cracking up watching it now. Funny indeed.
That video was directed by Daniels, the directing duo behind Everything Everywhere All at Once (Daniel Kwan is the guy).
I just recently discovered while watching an In Memoriam video on YouTube that Tim Donnelly, who played the escaped clone Richard in “Parts: The Clonus Horror” also played Chet Kelly, the comic relief firefighter on “Emergency!”. who was always trying and failing to train the station house dog mascot.
The two characters looked nothing alike.
Tim Donnelly died in 2021 of surgical complications.
Wonder if he would’ve been better off at Rampart?
What? Too soon?
I very much enjoyed the supporting roles in Saving Private Ryan by the likes of Dennis Farina, Ted Danson and Paul Giamatti but the guy from that movie who most fit the spirit of this thread might have been Nathan Fillion. Four years before Firefly, he played the “wrong” Pvt. James Ryan in a quick but powerful scene.
Even better IMHO - the first member of the squad to die in the rescue mission is a younger & much less swole Vin Diesel.
“Captain, the decent thing to do is to at least take the kid down the road to the next town.”
“We’re not here to do the decent thing, we’re here to follow fucking orders!”
He also played Monk’s brother Ambrose on Monk.
I just back from the movies and it wasn’t until the final credits rolled that I realized this actor:
Was this actor:
And who is it?
Jennifer Ehle, I think. I don’t know where the first screencap is from, but the second is from the 1995 Pride and Prejudice miniseries.
Back in the late 1980s, there was a 1960s music revival concert happening in Toronto. My girlfriend and I went. Among the featured acts were the Mamas and the Papas. Of course, Mama Cass had passed so she was replaced by Spanky Macfarlane (of Spanky and Our Gang), and Michelle Phillips was replaced by Mackenzie Phillips (of “One Day at a Time”).
It was a little confusing and crowded outside the venue, and by accident, I stepped on somebody’s foot. “Oh, sorry,” I said. The girl whose foot I stepped on said, “That’s okay, no harm done,” and I went to catch up with my girlfriend.
When I did, Girlfriend said, “Do you realize that you stepped on Mackenzie Phillips’ foot?”
Right you are! She is the British actor who is half of what many fans consider the definitive Elizabeth and Darcy. The top photo is from East of Wall, in which she plays the matriarch of a hardscrabble South Dakota clan of horse wranglers. Quite a range.
Could we not just post a photo of someone without explaining who is being shown?
British?