[QUOTE=Jodi]
My favorite character actors are Chris Cooper and Alan Rickman. Brilliant and sexy, the both of them.
[/QUOTE]
Alan Rickman hasn’t qualified as a character actor for decades. He’s a fantastic actor, especially when he plays either a villian or a put-upon foil, but hardly a backgrounder.
My vote goes to Robert Forester (Jackie Brown, Diamond Men, a huge pile of t.v. appearances and sub-B genre movies); his one memorable leading role was Haskell Wexler’s Medium Cool, and for some reason he’s never been able to parley that and his manifest talent into starring roles in decent films, or even a consistant t.v. career. I agree with the Thelma Ritter adorists, but she was in so few films. Rear Window would have been a much poorer movie without her caustic commentary, though.
Once that few people probably know is Michel Lonsdale: he played the droll villian, Hugo Drax, in the forgettable Moore-era Bond film Moonraker, but he shines as a secondary character in films like Ronin and Munich, where his subtle cues and ticks do a lot more than Al Pacino’s scenery chewing in any given film.
DeNiro isn’t a character actor per se, but he has often taken “character actor” parts in films like Angel Heart, Brazil, and The Good Shepherd, and acquits himself nicely without dominating the film the way other actors of his stature would.
The ultimate character actor, though, I think should be Alec Guinness. Even when this guy headlined a film, he had a knack for fading into character and completely becoming whatever he needed to be to play the role. He’s the central character in Tinker, Tailor, Solider, Spy, completely indispensible, and yet he almost seems to be just wandering through the story incidentally.
Stranger
