Fred Thompson. Match that resume!
Bill Burr impressed me in both Breaking Bad and The Mandalorian. That’s good range for a comic.
And then there’s Slim Pickens, who was a rodeo performer before he got into the movies as a character actor.
Didn’t Audie Murphy star in a couple of films?
I liked him as Fitzcairn in Highlander the Series.
Andre the Giant
I don’t know if he counts, but Danny Aiello didn’t become an actor until he was in his 40s, after years of working various odd jobs to make a living, including a stint as president of a transit workers union and as a nightclub bouncer. Starting with a couple of small roles in the early 1970s, including one line in “The Godfather,” he went on to dozens of acclaimed roles in television and motion pictures. I always enjoyed seeing him in anything he made. For him, life began at 40.
Richard Farnsworth.
About 40 of them. Don Siegel was going to cast him as the psycho sniper in Dirty Harry just before Murphy died in a plane crash.
Thanks for the background! I had no idea about that, and I definitely love every role I ever saw him in.
OJ Simpson
Joseph N. “At last sir, have you no decency” Welch in Anatomy of a Murder. No argument, a bit wooden, but a delight nonetheless.
According to the story I’d heard, for the 1976 version of Midway, they tried to put actual participants both Japanese and American on mock-ups of their battle stations, but they froze up in terror. Seems 35 ml cameras are more terrifying than 16” guns.
And if we really want to go through the looking glass, there was M. E. Clifton James, a legitimate actor who was tapped by British Intelligence by virtue of his resemblance to Bernard Law Montgomery to act as his double to fool with Axis intelligence. When a movie was made of the switch, of course he got the part.
Just for your entertainment, here are Farina and Jones together in Snatch:
Yep, I kept scrolling to see if someone had mentioned him. My favorite role of his was as the naval office in Hunt For Red October.
I rremember watching him the first time, squinting at the TV, and asking myself “Isn’t that…?”
You wouldn’t think Farina could be funny, but if you haven’t seen it, Dave Barry’s Big Trouble is a hoot and he’s great!
I really liked that movie, and Dennis Farina was great in it.
I’m not sure if John Mahoney (best known as Martin Crane in Frasier) entirely qualifies, but he spent years as an English teacher, and an editor for a medical journal, before he decided to take acting lessons; he didn’t quit his day job to become a full-time actor until he was in his late 30s.
However, by the time he had his breakthrough as an actor (both on stage and in films), it appears that he’d been working at the craft for some years.
John Houseman was 71 when he got his first major movie role (“Paper Chase”), but this might not count as he was very busy in theater up to that point. He had only a fifteen year movie career.
And Houseman won the Best Supporting Actor Oscar for that first role; his previous experience was as a theater and film producer and director.