people who have starring/supporting roles in every movie but aren't really "famous"

2) Parker Posey?

3) Lili Taylor

4) Steve Buscemi

5)Dan Hedaya

Steve Buscemi is famous!

yeah wtf buscemi and russo are famous. if i've heard of them, they're famous.

No, if the lex has heard of them, they're famous.

buscemi is 2 famous 4 this.

Mariette Hartley

kurtwood smith

warren oates was the king of this in the 70s

Clint Howard, Ron Howard's brother.

morton csokas

Does Alfred Molina work?

http://www.cracked.com/index.php?name=News&sid=1990

except some of these are obviously stupid. james cromwell is plenty famous/known.

So we're talking about popular character actors?

Who aren't famous.

Vincent Shiavelli owns this thread.

my answers are all, like, 'that chick with the hair', 'that dude with the eye'

Fred Thompson

William Fichter. Is that how you spell it? He's in everything ever, but never the lead.

Except on some TV show I never watched.

That's a good one. ILX loves them some William Fichtner.
WILLIAM FICHTNER!

the longhaired, tattooed, scarred native american dude who always plays the bad guy ganstaaaaa... i think he was in 'once upon a time in mexico' and possibly 'from dusk til dawn', and any other movie that requires a bad muthafucka.

he never plays the starring or supporting role though! that's what this thread is about

luis guzman

these last two are in that cracked mag gallery. and who could forget Peter Greene, possibly a poor man's Fichtner(!). He actually starred in that Halle Berry movie a couple years back iirc.

"he never plays the starring or supporting role though! that's what this thread is about"

sorry :( i am a mentalist. i can't even get the italics code working today.

http://www.carriesdiary.com/imgs/jackpic.jpg
wait, who am I again?

mark ruffalo and stellan skaarsgard aren't FAMOUS famous, do they count?

they're kinda famous, yeah? not paris hilton-famous, but well-known by any movie-goer with discerning taste.

i saw stellan skaarsgard'd penis last night.

skaarsgard'S

haha actually skarsgard's with a little 'o' on top of the second 'a' but he'll take what he can get.

hey is that ron livingston or scott foley? I can never tell for some reason. it works for both of them really.

Judge Reinhold, now more than ever

Cary Elwes, too.

Interesting the overwhelmingly maleness of this list. No, I'm not trying to start a feminist rant. Guh.

But why? Suppose it's because there are few female actors who fit this description? Are women either stars, co-stars or utterly invisible/interchangeable? Think, think, think ...

Eileen Brennan?

Ellen Burstyn?

Used to be Olympia Dukakis, but then she struck gold that Cher movie.

I'm drawing a blank here.

http://www.mikefs.co.uk/M00015043-01.jpg

Ed Harris

http://cricketfeet.com/actingqs/JamesRebhorn.jpg

ok, ok, i got one!!

>>>>DEAN STOCKWELL

(i just watched 'paris, texas' last nite)

am i now no longer a mentalist?

Not sure i understand either, isn't there a statute of limitations though? Lack of famousness for Stockwell, Reinhold, and especially Russo is a function of them not getting work lately but they were once stars. We're looking for never-wases, not has-beens right?

was stockwell ever really a star? maybe i'm too young to remember.

i just assumed with him, the only movie i've ever seen him helm is 'Boy with Green Hair' when he was a kid. I think if anything he's more famous than his number of appearances would suggest, given quantam leap's run

i suck at this game.

but i have 5.5hrs of work left, so maybe i'll get better.

http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Events/2925/DylanBaker_Wargo_4747698_400.jpg
IM IN YR MOVIES, STEALIN YOUR SCENES

MC Gainey

M Emmett Walsh
Dan Hadeya
Brion James
JT Walsh

wes studi! i love that guy

Saul Rubinek

See? Still, no women. This is so odd.

How about Cloris Leachman?

Mary McDonnell?

Jane Lynch, for a while. she was in the fugitive!

http://www.badmovieplanet.com/unknownmovies/pictures/nightnoon3.JPG

M. Emmet Walsh pwns

Also Joe Don Baker

I do think its a truism that women as a rule are not allowed to have a career as character actors.

Chris Elliott

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2005/10/31/books/elli184.jpg

http://www.ohiou.edu/esl/elective/film/AngryMen/JFiedler.jpg

http://www.startrek.com/imageuploads/200506/tos-036-hengist-2/320x240.jpg

Robin Tunney

John Fielder: voice of Piglet, amirite?

i just looked it up, and yes. Also, Clint Howard was the voice of Roo. Huh. Learn somethin new every day.

lot of gangster character actors fit the bill here (at least within that particular genre)

I think this thread calls for people whose names go above the movie title

Robert Davi and Eric Roberts, who I used to get confused with each other.

Eventually I lost a $1 bet on that guy from Goonies being Julia Roberts' brother.

There sure are a lot of famous people on this thread.

Michael Shannon

Kathleen Wilhoite

J.K.Simmons

Tony Cox

I'll see your Tony Cox and raise you a Billy Barty

Chris Cooper

Chris Cooper won an Oscar!

ok i think I'm hitting a groove here. Chris Cooper OTM, oscar or no. Toni Collette would maybe qualify, her roles seem to always straddle lead/supporting in a weird way. Dermut Mulroney (sp?). Liev Schreiber!

claire forlani? she's had leading roles and is a regular on csi:ny now but i always see her and think 'oh it's that girl that was in basquiat'. note: i never saw meet joe black.

Most of the biggest U.S. stage actors fall into this category: Schreiber, Cherry Jones, Dylan Baker for sure, John Mahoney pre-Fraiser, Marian Seldes.

As film actors only: Spalding Gray, Christopher Durang, Wallace Shawn.

For gals: Hope Davis, Laura Linney.

John Carroll Lynch (best known from Fargo and Zodiac).

I was watching the filming of a Dark Knight scene downtown last night and I got to wondering if any of the people looking on even recognized Aaron Eckhart. Or even Maggie Gyllenhaal, for that matter. Or, if he'd been there, Christian Bale. They're all relatively big names, but they probably could still just about walk down the street unmolested, I'd bet.

P.S. I am very out of touch with popular culture as it is experienced by most people kthanxbye

P.P.S. I was also watching the filming of a scene from Larry the Cable Guy's upcoming laffer Witless Protection (ha! ha!) this afternoon and, although I'll bet most of the people in the crowd probably recognized that talentless douchenozzle, nobody really acted like they gave a shit.

i best know john carroll lynch from drew carey show reruns. he was a major character on that. i don't know if he counts, though tbh i couldn't have told you his name.

Cliff Curtis

CCH Pounder
Judy Greer
Paula Marshall
Michael Kelly
Paul Ben-Victor
Adam Goldberg

(not so much movies, my 6, but still)

Gene Hackman

Alec Baldwin

Doris Roberts

Woohoo! Kathleen Wilhoite, Laura Linney, Doris Roberts....

Who was that woman who played the psychic in the Poltergeist movies? I'm not sure if she was really a midget or just very very short.

Marcia Wallace
Julie Kavner
Grrr... Can't think of her name, but the woman who played Selma on Night Court.
Connie Selleca

Cliff Curtis

-- spectra, Tuesday, 12 June 2007 02:38 (3 hours ago)

he's world famous in NZ!!

(and apparently he's a bit of a wanker)

We already had a thread about this:

Faces: a thread for supporting movie/tv actors whose mugs most of you would recognize, but whose names you'd never know.

I suggested these two there:

http://www.crazy4cinema.com/Actor/imgs/levy.jpg

http://entimg.msn.com/i/150/Movies/Actors2/Baranski_JF88657838_150x200.jpg

I also think Ron Perlman fits the bill, vbecause he has an instantly recognizable face, but I doubt that many people could actually name him:

http://www.mtv.com/shared/media/news/images/m/movies/sq-ron-perlman-2003-intv.jpg

(Okay, he had the lead role in Hellboy, but it's not like he got really famous for that.)

that woman has an eerie resemblance to ron perlman... are you sure that isnt' him in drag?

I think Peter Stormare is a good one because everyone recognizes him but they're always like "they cut-off-your-johnson guy!" or "the guy who put Steve Buscemi in the woodchipper".

hell yes Peter Stormare is a good answer, been noticing him lately. And he was in the Frogger episode of Seinfeld.

In response to a gentle letter from a New York lawyer, dying of cancer in a hospital, who said he very much wanted the couple to be reunited, Fowles wrote back, "Yes, they were." On the same day he got a "horrid" letter from an American woman who angrily demanded, "Why can't you say what you mean, and for God's sake, what happened in the end?" Fowles replied curtly: "They never saw each other again."

oh shit! wrong thread!! um, yes peter stormare!

http://www.imdb.com/gallery/granitz/2323/Events/2323/MaryKayPla_Grant_2061253_400.jpg

http://www.tvguide.com/images/pgimg/mary-kay-place1.jpg

Celia Weston

http://www.kfilmu.net/obrazky/herci/celia-weston.jpg

Patricia Clarkson

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/section/movies/filmography/3/WireImage_3662214.jpg

William Bendix

http://www.nndb.com/people/727/000031634/bendix-999002700.jpg

Larry Hankin

http://www.beatsupernovarasa.com/immagini/hankinl.jpg

Brian Cox

http://www.nndb.com/people/712/000072496/cox-sm.jpg

http://www.michaelromanos.com/pictures/stock_photos/seymour_cassel.jpg

peter stormare just might be my #1 'that guy'