Stephen Dillane who played Stannis Baratheon on GOT has a small part in Zero Dark Thirty. (Gandolfini also has a small part too)
He also played Jefferson in the mini series John Adams.
Robert Blake playing an adolescent shepherd in *Have Gun Will Travel.
- After Paladin is beaten to a pulp, the Blake character brings him back to town in a wheel barrow.
Laurie Metcalf, aka “Miz Mary Cooper,” was divorced neighbor Marcie in John Candy’s Uncle Buck.
Pert Kelton, the original Alice on The Honeymooners before she was blacklisted, was Robert Duvall’s mother in “Miniature,” tonight’s episode of Twilight Zone. A young Barbara Barrie (aka “Mrs Barney Miller”) was his sister, and a cigarette-smoking William Windom was his psychiatrist.
His boss was played by Barney Phillips, aka “Doc Kaiser” on 12 O’Clock High.
Laurie Metcalf also played Fraiser’s first wife, and was Dick’s blind date who was allergic to everything on 3rd Rock From The Sun.
I apologize if this has been mentioned - I skimmed the thread and didn’t see it-- but for me the Coneheads movie is a treasure trove for this. Drew Carey is a taxi cab passenger. Michael Richards (Cosmo Kramer) is a motel clerk. Ellen Degeneris is a coach. Tom Arnold shows up as a golfer and Jon Lovitz as a dentist. Every now and then I will rewatch this movie just for all the little surprise cameos and appearances of then barely known performers.
And director Barry Sonnenfeld has a small part in his movie “Addams Family Values”. He plays Mr. Glicker, the father of a nerdy Jewish camper and is shown bickering with his wife. It’s a small thing but as a personal friend of the Sonnenfeld family I can see how deeply personal that little scene was.
This sorta ties in with it, but. . .
Many, many years ago, I was watching some commercial, and the voice really struck me: “Holy Cow! That sounds like Race Bannon!”
It was an insurance or something commercial. I just remember the actor was wearing a fireman’s hat.
A few days later, I was watching a rerun of ‘The Wild Wild West,’ and heard the same voice–and noticed the actor was the same one from the insurance (or whatever) commercial a few days earlier. Carefully watching the credits, I caught the name, and sure enough, it was “Mike Road,” the voice behind Race Bannon.
Then later I started seeing him in supporting roles in various TV programs from the late 50s thru the 60s.
She also played the title character’s sister on Roseanne, and did the voice of the mom in the Toy Story movies. A very talented actress.
I was watching the movie Heartburn the other night and this scene with a young, thuggish Kevin Spacey threw me for a loop: link
A while ago I saw the classic Outer Limits episode Demon With a Glass Hand. Robert Culp is easy to recognize in that (and the Bradbury Building), but I decided to look up the actress to see if she had done anything else.
Arlene Martel, turned out I’d been seeing her for years. She was T’Pring in Star Trek, and I caught her in old episodes of The Rockford Files and Banacek, plus a few others. I hope it’s a compliment to an actress to say that I never even realized it was her.
On Cheers!, Frasier’s first wife was played by Emma Thompson. Dina Spybey played a much younger version of her on Frasier.
As an aside, I didn’t even recognize Laurie in Uncle Buck. I had to look her up on IMDB. She was actually quite hot back then! :o
I just saw Barbara Barrie as a cold, would-be murderess on an episode of “Rawhide”.
She just won the Tony Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role in a play for her performance in A Doll’s House, Part 2
She was in one of the first episodes of Twilight Zone, “What You Need,” along with several episodes of Hogan’s Heroes.
Going back to the soap Ryan’s Hope on page one, Kate Mulgrew’s sister was played by Marg Helgenberger, from original flavor CSI. And the actor who played their brother when the show originated (there was more than one) was Andrew Robinson, who was the punk that Clint Eastwood was talking to when he said, ““Do I feel lucky?” Well, do ya, punk?” in** Dirty Harry**.
Christian Slater was also in Ryan’s Hope, as Yasmine Bleeth’s boyfriend.
Arlene Martel had great small roles on three original-run Columbo episodes, too (“A Friend in Deed,” “The Greenhouse Jungle,” and “Double Exposure,” on which she was voice-only).
Columbo is a reliable source of cameo roles for familiar actors–a favorite of mine is F Troop’s Larry Storch as a fussy driving instructor in the 1974 “Negative Reaction.” (Larry’s still with us, by the way, in his mid-90s. His bit (as himself) in the 2005 stand-up comedy documentary* The Aristocrats* is impressive and memorable.)
A digression, if I may.
In Wanted Dead or Alive, her partner shot Josh Randall’s girlfriend.
Randall shot him five times in the gut with .45/70s. Do not annoy the man.
Was just watching a “Rifftrax” epi, and they were riffing on a B&W short from 1964 (very poor quality in every department) called, “David and Hazel: A Story in Communication.” At one point, the only black actor in the film sits down at a table with the two male stars; he really looks familiar and when he speaks–YES! It’s Percy Rodrigues!
Are you referring to the TV series with Steve McQueen, or the '80s movie with Rutger Hauer? 
He was famous for selling Humphrey Bogart the winning lottery ticket in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre.