I had a couple recognitions from those two guys from Numb3rs. David Krumholtz and Peter MacNicol. Now I knew both actors from previous work, but I didn’t realize at first that they had both been in Addams Family Values together until I caught it on cable.
Also, I knew Peter MacNicol had been in Ally McBeal, but I had know idea he was the lead in Dragonslayer.
I was watching Batman Begins the other week. Towards the end of the movie when the train is headed for the city’s water supply, a technician makes several comments about it.
I guy looked really familiar. Than it hit me.
“This R2 unit of yours is a little beat up. Want a new one?”
Fellow by the name of Shane Rimmer. He also played the American sub commander in The Spy Who Loved Me.
Mr. S and I have the same running competition – only we have to come up with a LINE from the other performance to get full credit. In other words, we can’t just say, “It’s that guy from the parking garage in Ferris Bueller”; we have to say (with proper inflection), “What country do you think this IS?”
My girlfriend and I caught one of the scenes in Dragonwyck on TCM this past weekend and she immediately recognized Harry Morgan. I coudn’t believe it. He was 31 and had a full head of hair and a beard, but it was him as confirmed by imdb.
My husband won’t even compete with me in the “identify the actor” game, because he knows I’ll beat the pants off him every time.
My personal best (that I remember, anyway), was a couple of years ago. I was watching a Miss Marple on PBS (“The Sittaford Mystery”) and I recognized one of the secondary characters. He was so familiar… and then it hit me: he was the Albino in The Princess Bride! I am still quite proud of that one - I haven’t seen any of his other work.
I watch a lot of shows that have a character-of-the-week (House, all of the Law & Order shows, etc.), so that’s muddying my identifying ability somewhat (“she looks familiar…” and then I look her up on IMDB and discover that she was on some episode of SVU 7 years ago).
Mel Smith is a very famous comedian in the UK. He also occasionally directs, though nothing too exciting (he directed the first Mr Bean movie, for example).
Whenever I watch Chuck, it has a cavalcade of actors often deliberately cast for their geeky/cult work in the past. It’s fun to pick out what each did that might have brought them into the show. So there are obvious ones like Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica), Bruce Boxleitner (Tron, Scarecrow and Mrs King), and Gary Cole (Office Space, Midnight Caller, Brady Bunch movie), but then you get the slightly more obscure ones like James Hong (Big Trouble in Little China amongst many others), Arnold Vosloo (The Mummy), and Vinnie Jones (Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels), to the outright nerdy, like Reginald VelJohnson reprising his character from Die Hard, Jed Rees from Galaxy Quest, and Michael Clarke Duncan, from tons of stuff really but the geekiest one I can think of is Daredevil.
Shane Rimmer? Shane Rimmer!? He was my “it’s that guy” for years. Rollerball, Dr. Strangelove, and a couple other Bonds. But if we’re playing Scarlett’s quote game…
“That armor plating must be inches thick.”
Right. Very funny bit.
I was re-watching Trainspotting recently. It occurred to me that I knew Tommy (2nd from the right) from somewhere, but he looked older and heftier.
Finally it hit me: “Holy shit!”
I was also watching Frequency recently, and had another “Holy Shit” moment when I realized that his friend’s son was…Michael Cera, twelve years old.
And as a counter point, if you watch Adventures in Babysitting, you’ll find him so toned down and buff as Thor (with longish hair too!), you may not recognize him at all.
For me is was re-watching Waiting and finding the kid who was the new awkward server to now be Sweets on Bones. He must be geeky no matter what he does.
Huh. I could have *sworn *he was played by Jaime Kennedy. I was just describing that whole scene to a friend the other day.
Jaime Kennedy was the guy peeing in the bushes next to Kumar.
Every actor who was on 40+ episodes of Oz has been on at least one, if not more episodes of one, if not more, of the L&O franchises with the exception of Eamonn Walker (Said). Click through the cast list on IMDb sometime, it’s astounding. That said, Dean Winters, was on the squad on L&O:SVU during the entire first (abbreviated) season. Kirk Acevedo was one of the regular investigators on the short-lived L&O: Trial by Jury. And we can’t forget Rita Moreno’s recurrent role on L&O: CI as Goren’s mother.
I’ve had this moment twice with the same actor. When I went to see Twilight the “dad” vampire was extremely familiar looking and so I looked him up afterwards, and realised - :smack: - it’s Peter Facinelli (aka Claire’s hot friend in Six Feet Under).
Then I was watching Damages over the weekend and thought one of the minor characters was extremely hot and slightly familiar looking, and so looked him up to be told it was - :smack: - Peter Facinelli. I have no doubt it’ll happen again with the same actor.
I’m also currently watching Being Human on BBC3 and had a “I know you” moment with a character, and it turned out she was Lyndsey Marshall who played Cleopatra in HBO’s Rome.
