If my OP is confusing, I’ll give an example of all three
An example of a memorable character with one line is the woman in “When Harry Met Sally” - “I’ll have what she’s having.” I don’t know who that woman was, if she’s been in anything else, or if she’s disappeared completely, but this could have been one of the best one liners in movie history.
An example of a memorable character with no lines in a movie is Quint’s helper/assistant/whatever in Jaws. The first time we see him, he’s in the town meeting when **Quint **scratches the chalkboard. When he follows **Quint **out in this dirty jacket and a filthy hunter’s orange baseball cap, it is just comical to me.
We see him again when they are loading the boat for their trip to find and kill the great white.
He never says a word.
A character that I thought was good in the movie that I’vce never seen again is in the movie Apocalypto. The little boy who played “Turtles Run” was a natural, and not once did I think I was watching someone coached by an acting teacher since he was one.
Another character in that movie that falls into the one line/one scene category is the little girl who has the sickness, and is pushed away from the slaves by one of the warriors with a hard stick in the chest. She gives a great speech in her only appearance, and I thought she was a professional actress. According to the movie notes, they found her on site at the shoot and hired her for the part. I doubt we’ll ever see her or Turtles Run again.
To answer, you can give as few or as many examples as you wish, and you don’t have to answer for each category. The memorable character that speaks one line can have more than one line if the character isn’t important to the plot. It’s not cut and dried, but I think you should all get my drift. I’m looking for a character that was supposed to be minor, and yet have left an indelible print on the movie.
A silent character shouldn’t be in the entire movie nor an important character, like Kevin Smith’s “Silent Bob”.
You could argue that the other bounty hunters from “The Empire Strikes Back” (Dengar, IG-88, 4-LOM, Bossk, and Zuckuss) were quite memorable to a generation of kids who had the action figures. Heck, to this day I still remember all their names, and I’m not even that big of a Star Wars fan.
They only appeared for a few seconds, none of them had a line (I think Bossk may have growled), and if I recall correctly they never appeared again in the rest of the film.
I’m pick the unfortunate Mr Kinney from the first Robocop film. According to the IMDB his one line of dialogue was “help me!”, and he only appears in one scene, where he is blown to shreds by a malfunctioning ED-209 robot. That, and the failed Robocop prototypes from Robocop II, which were stop-motion effects kitbashed as a throwaway gag. And yet they were surprisingly grim.
Jane Wiedlin’s Singing Telegram Girl from Clue? She appears, sings her song, gets shot, and is gone in less than ten seconds of screentime. I can still sing that song.
Er, Colleen Camp’s French maid outfit from the same film? Appears all-too-briefly, delivers no lines, impossible to ignore.
Bossk: Mr Kershner, sir, what’s my motivation for this scene?
Irvin Kershner: According to this note from George, you’re there to sell toys. Now… growl like a tiger, or something. Also, you’re blocking Boba, step back a bit.
The Banjo Kid in “Deliverance.”
An uncredited Toni Basil in “Myra Breckenridge.” She shows up several times in the movie as different characters, and just winks.
