What about the scary pimp he played in True Romance? Between that and Leon, definitely Bad Guy.
Anybody mention **Al Pacino **yet? Bruce Dern was another of my first thoughts. I mentioned Udo Kier a couple days ago in a Thread Games thread about this topic…
Lee Marvin was headed this way once.
William Watson. Always bad. Saw only one movie where Steven Keats had the (good) lead role: The Ivory Ape. I miss these guys.
Speaking of which, it was the first film I ever saw Giancarlo Esposito in, and like I said, he wasn’t what you could call a bad guy. Just passionate about his principles (and shoes) to the point of anger. Nobody in the film was an actual bad guy (except the choke-hold cop). The rioting was an indictment of society in general + hot weather.
David Warner was also a Catholic priest in The Omen and a Federation diplomat in Star Trek V - both good guys. But yes, he’s made his career playing villains.
I’m guessing you didn’t, like, read the thread.
Pardon the mutliple posting, but this has to be mentioned…
I can think of only one bad guy role Alan Arkin played, but dayum was he nasty as Roat in Wait Until Dark.
Javier Bardem. As Anton Chigurh in ‘No Country for Old Men’, there’s no one badder…or scarier.
He was a villain in a recent James Bond movie, too (playing it a bit too much like Anton C., I thought).
He was a good guy in Good Morning, Vietnam.
What about Michael Biehn?
Kyle Reese may have been a good guy, but that’s cancelled out by Johnny Ringo.
nm
I didn’t know about the HUAC thing, but he played the sympathetic (but powerless to prevent his client’s self-destruction) agent to Norman Maine in 1937’s A Star Is Born, and the lonely (but ultimately kindly) old Mr. Pendergast in Walt Disney’s Pollyanna.
The not-very-approachable but honorable Colonel Brandon in Sense and Sensibility (1995).
It’s been a long time since i saw either of those movies, and I don’t remember him in them. I’ll take your word for it about these roles.
I notice his IMDB listing is pretty sympathetic: “Adolphe’s extreme hardcore right-wing Republican politics hurt his later reputation, as he was made a scapegoat for his cooperation as a “friendly witness” at the House Un-American Activities Commission hearing during the Joseph McCarthy Red Scare era.”
Some people love to whitewash history.
Mickey Rourke is a fantastic actor. I’ve always been saddened by the turns of his career. Sin City wasn’t working at all until his character appeared and made it all fall into place. As for being a scumbag…
…as others have said its such a debatable term. If you mean seedy anti-hero or someone who commits crimes, then no…he probably has always played a sorta scumbag.
He’s seedy in Angel Heart, Pope of Greenwich Village, 9 1/2 Weeks, Year of the Dragon…He’s a disheveled guy, with oily hair.
Onstage. But thats about it.
(edges away from Sefton)…if you think Oldman is a hero in Romeo is Bleeding…(stops edging away and breaks into full on sprint)
Nah, he was the good guy in Aliens. And in Planet Terror.
Yes, a great role for him. And as Emma Thompson noted in her excellent book about the making of the film (which includes her complete, annotated Oscar-winning screenplay), she gave the character something Jane Austen hadn’t - a first name, Christopher.
The director of Angel Heart joked in a later interview that Mickey Rourke could make the most elegant suit look like a potato sack.
Al Leong?
The closest thing to a “good guy” I can remember him playing was Genghis Khan…