Your Guide to Character Actors: Middle Aged White Guys Edition

I'm a big fan of character actors. A good character actor can turn the most one dimensional placeholder role in a film into something memorable, usually due to the charismatic constellation of wrinkles and/or jowls that your movie star types are simply not allowed to sport. Here are some of the pluggers who make cinematic reality possible, and whose crucial contributions are so often overlooked.




Crusty Southern Authority Figure:


Barry Corbin and Noble Willingham


This character actor subgenre is dominated by two guys who are so similar in bearing and accent and head shape that they might as well be fused at the torso. The easiest way to keep them straight is to remember that Barry Corbin was on Northern Exposure and Noble Willingham was on Walker, Texas Ranger.





Pudgy Jewish Authority Figure:


Maury Chalkin and Saul Rubinek


As in the Crusty Southern catagory, the role of the older Jewish gentleman of position in any given movie is usually played by either Maury Chalkin, probably most well known as the cavalry officer is shoots himself in the beginning of Dances With Wolves or Saul Rubinek, who was famous gunned down while trying to buy a suitcase full of coke in True Romance.





WASPy Authority Figure:


James Rebhorn and Bob Gunton


So you want your mayonaise-eating district attorney or corporate bigwig to be tall and slender? That calls for the rawboned, hawkfaced badassery of James Rebhorn, whose highest rank in a film came when he played Bill Pullman's Secretary of Defense in Independence Day. If you're looking for more a stocky, fireplug of a man, but want to stick with the Mainline Protestant vibe, you can't go wrong with Bob Gunton, best known as the evil warden in Shawshank Redemption.





Vaguely Effeminate Authority Figure:


Stephen Tobolowsky and Jeffrey DeMunn

The word "vaguely" is pretty capacious in this case. Stephen Tobolowsky, ("You know, Ned....Ryerson!") is really quite effeminate, wearas Jeffrey DeMunn, who's been a bunch of movies, but never really in a notable way...um, he was the sheriff in the original Hitcher, is just slightly effeminate. I guess if you put both levels of effeminate together, they even out to "vaguely."

Sleazy Dirtbag:

Mark Boone Jr and Richard Edson

Richard Edson is actually sort of well known for his roles in Jim Jarmusch movies, but he gets his most consistent work playing skeevy lowlives in Hollywood films like Strange Days. He always looks incredibly dirty and in the early stages of heroin withdrawl, which is a very good look when you're getting rousted by a cop played by, I dunno, Russell Crowe or somebody. Mark Boone Jr is known basically for being a guy who shows up in a lot of movies as an unwashed scumbag looking like a chubby Tom Waits. He was Gordon's crooked partner in Batman Begins.