Zooey Deschanel. Sister of Emily Deschanel (Bones), daughter of Caleb and Mary Jo Deschanel (The Right Stuff). Talented family.
You mean the evil deputy.
The one that got shot?
Why Ed, what an ugly thing to say! Does this mean you’re not my friend anymore? You know, Ed, if I thought you weren’t my friend I don’t think I could bear it.
Curly Bill why you making me drink this cyanide-laced Flavor Aid?
CMC fnord!
I saw Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves and thought the Sheriff was pretty cool.
I saw Die Hard and thought the main terrorist guy was awesome.
I saw Galaxy Quest and thought Alexander Dane/Dr. Lazarus was hilarious.
I saw Harry Potter (1) and was in love with Snape where I had not been before.
Then I bought the Galaxy Quest DVD, watched the first two minutes, and my whole universe realigned.
My vote goes to Jason Isaacs.
Compare the parts he played in Event Horizon, the Harry Potter movies, Armageddon, Black Hawk Down and a dozen others. Amazing.
And the Emperor Augustus was Brian Blessed, clean-shaven. Bearded Blessed is familiar from the first “Blackadder” series (King Richard) and Kenneth Branagh’s *Henry V * (Essex), among other things.
I had several “I know that guy!” moments when “Kolchak: The Night Stalker” turned up on Trio a while back. Two that come to mind are “Hey, it’s Bosley from ‘Charlie’s Angels’!” (the TV show, not the movie) and “Hey, it’s Klinger from ‘MASH’!”
And most memorably for me, the King of the Hawkmen in Flash Gordon. “DIIIIIIVE!!!”
I recently watched The Interpreter. I knew I recognized the guy that played Kuman-Kuman, so I looked him up. “Ah, the guy from Layer Cake. That’s right.” Then I kept going down the list…“Huh. He was also the overlord from Black Hawk Down…” and I kept going…“Holy CRAP! He was Katanga the boat captain from Raiders of the Lost Ark!”
Brad Dourif is in Deadwood??? Man, I gotta get HBO. I love Brad Dourif.
Here’s something equally cool: Brad Dourif, who you know as the voice of Chucky, and Robert Englund, who was Freddy Krueger in the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, were both in the horror movie Urban Legend.
I noticed that on my first watching of UL, and tried to recognize other horror actors, but I think those two are it.
(also: I was just doing some fact-checking on IMDB and see that Dourif and Englund were both in separate episodes of Babylon 5. I remember Dourif - that episode is part of why I like him so much - but I didn’t remember Englund. Gonna have to watch more B5)
She was also Fran in Dodgeball.
My weirdest one for me recently was Roger Carmel, who played Harry Mudd on Star Trek TOS, as well as bit parts on every crappy sitcom in history, played Senor Naugles, the fictional spokesman of the Naugles taco chain. I don’t remember if Naugles was a national chain or regional, so his commercials may have only been seen on the west coast. Naugles was Borged by Del Taco in the eighties anyway.
Old MASH episodes turn up familiar faces once in a while, usually playing patients. Kurt Russell and Lawrence Fishburn off the top of my head. The strangest had to be Harry Morgan, before he was cast as Potter, playing a deranged general. I was completely confused the first time I saw that one.
I’m sure most Dopers already know this one, but what the heck: In the Twilight Zone movie segment based on “It’s a Good Life” (with the creepy little boy whose wishes all come true), the girl who gets wished into cartoon-land is played by Nancy Cartwright, aka the voice of Bart Simpson.
Hugh Laurie was also in Black Adder.
I was also surprised to find that Elijah Wood (Lord of the Rings) made his debut as one of the video game kids on Back to the Future II (“You mean you gotta use your hands; that’s like a baby’s toy”).
It’s also hard to believe that James Van Der Beek is both Dawson on Dawson’s Creek and Sean in the movie Rules of Attraction. In Dawson’s Creek, he’s a sensitive high schooler (or college student in the later episodes) who is mostly concerned about relationships and feelings. In Rules of Attraction, he’s mostly concerned with drinking, doing drugs, and getting laid.
Just to note, “It’s a Good Life” is by Jerome Bixby. And I never knew that, actually, that’s cool. Of course the Simpsons did their take on that story as well.
Well, not just crappy – he was on The Dick Van Dyke Show, after all.
And he wasn’t just a bit player. For a time, he was one of the Fathers in Law on The Mothers in Law.
Carmel had a yo-yoing weight situation. He was thin on the DVD show, fat as Harry Mudd, then less fat for TMiL, then realy thin again. When he did the Naugles commercials (they ran in Utah, too, where I saw them) he was fat again. It wasn’t until he died that I found out it was him, and said “That was Roger C. Carmel??”
This is a pretty minor one, but I’d been wondering why Craig Robinson, who plays Darryl on The Office (the warehouse fellow who works with Pam’s fiancée) looked so familiar. A friend pointed out that he played the character Mutha in Lucky, the woefully short-lived F/X series with John Corbett.
A couple years ago I watched Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life. I like action films in general, but I was more impressed by this one than the first since Croft’s side-kick was pretty hot. It made me wonder if I’d seen the guy in question in anything else. Reign of Fire? I saw that silly thing. Dracula 2000? Yup, I saw that one too. Timeline? Holy shit, I’d seen that less than a month before!
It was then I realized that Gerald Butler is my hey! it’s that guy!.
His hotness couldn’t get me though The Phantom of the Opera, sadly.
The one I missed (I am usually good at voices) was Jenette Goldstein. She was Vasquez in Aliens, the Irish mother who takes her kids back to berthing in Titanic, and the foster mom in T:2.
Most big “stars” I spot, it is the character actors I miss.
Lucky was an awesome series, and it would have been a bigger hit if it came out a couple years later, after poker became such a big success on television.
Sadly, John Corbett seems to be a country singer now.
RE: J.K. Simmons…
Jameson’s voice may also be familiar if you like M&Ms. Particularly, yellow ones.
(J.K. Simmons does the voice for Yellow M&M in the commercials.)
My favorite one: When I saw HP: Prisoner of Azkaban, the charming, sympathetic and rather cute Professor Lupin looked familiar to me, but I just couldn’t place him.
And then I remembered: David Thewlis played lowest-of-the-low scumbag Jimmy Jackson on Prime Suspect III, where he lured young boys and pimped them out to pedophiles.
Yipe! No wonder he had to retire from Hogwarts.