What's 'Is Name ?

1. Strother Martin

American character actor who achieved considerable fame in the last decade of his life. A native of Kokomo, Indiana, Strother Martin Jr. was the youngest of three children of Strother Douglas Martin, a machinist, and Ethel Dunlap Martin. His family moved soon after his birth to San Antonio, Texas, ...

2. Dub Taylor

Actor | The Getaway

Dub Taylor was born on February 26, 1907 in Richmond, Virginia, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Getaway (1972), The Wild Bunch (1969) and You Can't Take It with You (1938). He was married to Florence Gertrude Heffernan. He died on October 3, 1994 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

3. Geoffrey Lewis

Actor | The Way of the Gun

Talented and highly capable character actor Geoffrey Lewis, with rustic (sometimes sour-faced) looks, grew up in Rhode Island but was moved out to California at the age of ten. Lewis was very keen on the dramatic arts at high school, but often preferred to put on his own one-man shows rather than ...

4. Walter Brennan

Actor | The Westerner

In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and ...

5. Chill Wills

Actor | Giant

Colorful character actor of American Westerns. Named "Chill" as an ironic comment on his birth date being the hottest day of 1902. A musician from his youth, he performed from the age of 12 with tent shows, in vaudeville, and with stock companies. While performing in vaudeville in Kansas City, he ...

6. Andy Devine

Actor | Stagecoach

Rotund comic character actor of American films. Born Andrew Vabre Devine in Flagstaff, Arizona, he was raised in nearby Kingman, Arizona, the son of an Irish-American hotel operator Thomas Devine and his wife Amy. Devine was an able athlete as a student and actually played semi-pro football under a...

7. M. Emmet Walsh

Actor | Blood Simple

Wonderfully talented, heavyset character actor (from New York, but regularly playing Southerners) M. Emmet Walsh has made a solid career of playing corrupt cops, deadly crooks, and zany comedic roles since the early 1970s.

Michael Emmet Walsh was born in Ogdensburg, to Agnes Katharine (Sullivan) and...

8. Elisha Cook Jr.

Actor | House on Haunted Hill

Although this pint-sized actor started out in films often in innocuous college-student roles in mid-30s rah-rahs, playing alongside the likes of a pretty Gloria Stuart or a young, pre-"Oz" Judy Garland, casting directors would soon enough discover his flair for portraying intense neurotics or ...

9. Vincent Schiavelli

Actor | Tomorrow Never Dies

Vincent Schiavelli, selected in 1997 by Vanity Fair as one of the best character actors in America, had made over 120 film and television appearances. He studied acting at NYU's Theatre Program. Aside from his acting career, Vincent was the author of three cookbooks, and has written numerous ...

10. Bruce Dern

Actor | Nebraska

Two-time Oscar nominee Bruce Dern's tremendous career is made up of playing both modern day heroes and legendary villains. Through decades of lauded performances, Dern has acquired the reputation of being one of the most talented and prolific actors of his generation.

Dern currently appears opposite...

11. Ned Beatty

Actor | Network

Stocky, genial-looking supporting actor Ned Beatty was once hailed by Daily Variety as the "busiest actor in Hollywood."

Ned Thomas Beatty was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Margaret (Fortney) and Charles William Beatty. He grew up fishing and working on farms. His hometown of St. Matthews, ...

12. Harry Dean Stanton

Actor | Lucky

Stanton was born in West Irvine, Kentucky, to Ersel (Moberly), a cook, and Sheridan Harry Stanton, a barber and tobacco farmer. He lived in Lexington, Kentucky and graduated from Lafayette Senior High School with the class of 1944. Drafted into the Navy, he served as a cook in the U.S. Navy during ...

13. Jack Elam

Actor | C'era una volta il West

Colorful American character actor equally adept at vicious killers or grizzled sidekicks. As a child he worked in the cotton fields. He attended Santa Monica Junior College in California and subsequently became an accountant and, at one time, manager of the Bel Air Hotel. Elam got his first movie ...

14. Slim Pickens

Actor | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Slim Pickens spent the early part of his career as a real cowboy and the latter part playing cowboys, and he is best remembered for a single "cowboy" image: that of bomber pilot Maj. "King" Kong waving his cowboy hat rodeo-style as he rides a nuclear bomb onto its target in the great black comedy ...

15. Edgar Buchanan

Actor | Shane

At the age of seven, he and his family moved to Oregon. After studying at the University of Oregon, he followed in his father's footsteps and became a dentist, graduating from North Pacific Dental College. From 1929 to 1937, he practiced oral surgery in Eugene, Oregon. He then moved his practice to...

16. Warren Oates

Actor | The Wild Bunch

Warren Oates was an American character actor of the 1960s and 1970s and early 1980s whose distinctive style and intensity brought him to offbeat leading roles.

Oates was born in Depoy, a very small Kentucky town. He was the son of Sarah Alice (Mercer) and Bayless Earle Oates, a general store owner. ...

17. Michael J. Pollard

Actor | Bonnie and Clyde

Cherubic, wispy-haired looks made his typecasting as impish or eccentric characters somehow inevitable. The pint-sized Michael J. Pollard was born the son of a bar manager of Polish ancestry in Passaic (New Jersey). He studied drama at the Actor's Studio (with a young Marilyn Monroe in the same ...

18. Jack Weston

Actor | Dirty Dancing

In a 40-year stage, film, and television career, Weston played sleazy villains to hapless men going through midlife crises to clumsy comics. He was one of the bad guys who victimize a blind Audrey Hepburn in the 1967 cult classic Wait Until Dark (1967) but meets his end at the hands of the number ...

19. Peter Boyle

Actor | Everybody Loves Raymond

A bold, blunt instrument of hatred and violence at the onset of his film career, Peter Boyle recoiled from that repugnant, politically incorrect "working class" image to eventually play gruff, gentler bears and even comedy monsters in a career that lasted four decades.

He was born on October 18, ...

20. Timothy Carey

Actor | The Killing

Timothy Carey had one of the most unusual careers of all Hollywood character actors, obtaining full cult status for his portrayals of the doomed, the psychotic and the plain crazy. Carey's career was an "only in America" type of story, and he retains his status as a great American original many ...

21. Burt Young

Actor | Rocky

Burly, talented character actor who remained consistently busy playing "rough edged" or scary characters, often on the wrong side of the law. Young was born on April 30, 1940, in New York City, the son of a high school shop teacher. He is of Italian descent. Young received his dramatic arts ...

22. Zero Mostel

Actor | The Producers

Zero Mostel was born Samuel Joel Mostel on February 28, 1915 in Brooklyn, New York, one of eight children of an Orthodox Jewish family. Raised in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, the young Zero, known as Sammy, developed his talent for painting and drawing at art classes provided by the ...

23. Victor Buono

Actor | What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Larger than life, Laughtonesque, and with an eloquent, king-sized appetite for maniacal merriment, a good portion of the work of actor Victor Buono was squandered on hokey villainy on both film and television. Ostensibly perceived as bizarre or demented, seldom did Hollywood give this cultivated ...

24. Frank Morgan

Actor | The Wizard of Oz

Jovial, somewhat flamboyant Frank Morgan (born Francis Wuppermann) will forever be remembered as the title character in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but he was a veteran and respected actor long before he played that part, and turned in outstanding performances both before and after that film. One of ...

25. Ed Lauter

Actor | Not Another Teen Movie

Edward Matthew Lauter II was born on October 30, 1938 in Long Beach, New York. In a film career that extended for over four decades, Lauter starred in a plethora of film and television productions since making his big screen debut in the western Dirty Little Billy (1972). He portrayed an eclectic ...

26. Lee J. Cobb

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Lee J. Cobb, one of the premier character actors in American film for three decades in the post-World War II period, was born Leo Jacoby in New York City's Lower East Side on December 8, 1911. The son of a Jewish newspaper editor, young Leo was a child prodigy in music, mastering the violin and the...

27. Walter Burke

Actor | Support Your Local Sheriff!

Highly recognizable Irish-American character actor whose small stature and wizened features made him resemble a leprechaun (a role which he played on more than one occasion). Probably best known as Willie Stark's bodyguard in All the King's Men (1949).

28. James Hong

Actor | Everything Everywhere All at Once

James Hong was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA. He studied civil engineering at the University of Minnesota, but at some point along the way became interested in acting. He graduated from the University of Southern California and practiced for 1½ years as a road engineer with the County of Los ...

29. Frank Gorshin

Actor | 12 Monkeys

Frank John Gorshin, Jr. was born on April 5, 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. His father was a railroad worker and his mother, Frances (Preseren), was a seamstress. His family was originally from Novo Mesto, Slovenia. While in high school, young Frank worked as an usher at the Sheridan Square ...

30. Peter Lorre

Actor | M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder

Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in Rózsahegy in the Slovak area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Hungarian Jewish parents. He learned both Hungarian and German languages from birth, and was educated in elementary and secondary schools in the Austria-Hungary capitol Vienna, but did ...

31. George Dzundza

Actor | Crimson Tide

George Dzundza was born on July 19, 1945 in Rosenheim, Bavaria, Germany. He is an actor and assistant director, known for Crimson Tide (1995), Basic Instinct (1992) and The Deer Hunter (1978). He has been married to Mary Jo Vermeulen since 1982. They have three children.

32. Pat Buttram

Actor | Robin Hood

The son of a circuit-riding Methodist preacher in rural Alabama, Pat Buttram became one of America's best-known comic entertainers. He left Alabama a month before his 18th birthday to attend the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. An announcer from radio station WLS was on hand to interview members of the ...

33. Don Stroud

Actor | Licence to Kill

The younger son of vaudeville great Clarence Stroud (of the Stroud Twins) and singer Ann McCormack, who toured the world with Frank Sinatra, Don Stroud grew up on the beach in Honolulu, Hawaii, where his stepfather, Paul Livermore, and his mother, Ann, owned and operated the popular Embers ...

34. George Kennedy

Actor | Cool Hand Luke

George Harris Kennedy, Jr. was born on February 18, 1925 in New York City, to Helen (Kieselbach), a ballet dancer, and George Harris Kennedy, an orchestra leader and musician. Following high school graduation, Kennedy enlisted in the United States Army in 1943 with the hope to become a fighter ...

35. Pat Hingle

Actor | The Quick and the Dead

Pat Hingle (real name: Martin Patterson Hingle) was born in Miami, Florida, the son of a building contractor. His parents divorced when Hingle was still in his infancy (he never knew his father) and his mother supported the family by teaching school in Denver. She then began to travel (with her son...

36. Ed Begley

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Charismatic character star Edward James Begley was born in Hartford, Connecticut of Irish parents and educated at St.Patrick's school. His interest in acting first surfaced at the age of nine, when he performed amateur theatricals at the Hartford Globe Theatre. Determined to make his own way, he ...

37. Harry Guardino

Actor | The Enforcer

Brash, virile Italian-American lead and supporting "tough guy" Harry Guardino, with dark, wavy hair and a perpetual worried look on his craggy-looking mug, was born Harold Vincent Guardino on December 23, 1925, in Manhattan but raised as a Brooklynite. Serving with the U.S. Navy during World War II...

38. Keenan Wynn

Actor | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

The talented scion of a show-business family, Keenan Wynn's father was the great burlesque and television buffoon Ed Wynn while his maternal grandfather, Frank Keenan, earned distinction on the other side of the entertainment ladder as a Shakespearean tragedian. Mother Hilda Keenan was also a minor...

39. Richard Jaeckel

Actor | Starman

Stocky tough-guy character actor Richard Jaeckel was one of Hollywood's most prolific supporting stars. Born in Long Island, New York, on October 10, 1926, Jaeckel's family moved to Los Angeles when he was still in his teens. After graduation from Hollywood High School, Jaeckel was discovered by a ...

40. Percy Helton

Actor | The Set-Up

One of the most familiar faces and voices in Hollywood films of the 1950s. Percy Helton acted almost from infancy, appearing in his father's vaudeville act. The famed Broadway producer David Belasco cast Helton in a succession of child roles over several years, giving the boy an invaluable ...

41. Charles Durning

Actor | Dog Day Afternoon

WWII veteran, dance instructor and diversely talented stage & screen actor were all inclusions on the resume of this perpetually busy US actor who didn't get in front of the cameras until around the time of his fortieth birthday. The stockily built Charles Durning was one of Hollywood's most ...

42. Arnold Stang

Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

A show-stopping comic for decades, the inimitable Arnold Stang, with the trademark Runyonesque voice and thick, black glasses, started out famously on radio before branching out to include Broadway, films and especially TV. Born on September 28, 1918, in New York City (for decades he himself ...

43. Richard B. Shull

Actor | Splash

Veteran character actor Richard B. Shull was born on February 24, 1929 in Evanston, Illinois and raised in the Midwest. He attended the University of Iowa, then served with the U.S. Army in 1953. Finding work as a stage manager following his release, he finally made his Broadway debut in the Marx ...

44. Michael Constantine

Actor | My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Award-winning Greek-American actor Michael Constantine (born 22 May 1927) is best known for his portrayal of the Windex bottle-toting family patriarch "Gus Portokalos" in the sleeper hit My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002). Before his appearance in that movie and the subsequent TV series based on it, ...

45. Frank Cady

Actor | Rear Window

Although Frank Cady's most famous role would be that of general-store owner Sam Drucker, one of the less nutty residents of Hooterville in both Green Acres (1965) and Petticoat Junction (1963), he had a history as a film, stage and television actor long before those shows. Cady also appeared on ...

46. Joe Flynn

Actor | The Rescuers

Born on November 8, 1924, in Youngstown, Ohio and after attending Northwestern University, Flynn began his entertainment career as a ventriloquist and as a radio performer. During World War II, he served in the Army's Special Services Branch (formerly the Morale Branch) entertaining the troops in ...

47. Robert Strauss

Actor | Stalag 17

Burly American character actor with a deep gravelly voice who was equally adept at comedy and drama. The son of a theatrical costume designer, Strauss worked as a salesman and also as a singing waiter and busboy before finding success in the stage version of "Detective Story" on Broadway. He ...

48. John McGiver

Actor | Breakfast at Tiffany's

John Irwin McGiver came to acting relatively late in life. He held B.A. and Master's degrees in English from Fordham, Columbia and Catholic Universities and spent his early years teaching drama and speech at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx. He had an early flirtation with the acting ...

49. Richard Lynch

Actor | Halloween

Richard Hugh Lynch was born on February 12, 1940 in Brooklyn, New York City, to Irish immigrant parents. He was one of seven children. Before starting a career as an actor, he joined the United States Marine Corps in 1958. He served for four years where he made Corporal, and did a tour of the ...

50. Charles Martin Smith

Director | Dolphin Tale

Charles Martin Smith is an American film actor, writer, and director. Born in Van Nuys, California, Smith was discovered by a talent agent while acting in a school play. After a few years of working in film, he landed the role of Terry "Toad" Fields in George Lucas' 1973 film, American Graffiti (...

51. Harry Carey Jr.

Actor | Tombstone

Harry Carey, Jr., had been reliable character actor for decades, mostly in Westerns, before he retired. He is the son of the actor Harry Carey and the actress Olive Carey. He was born on his parents' 1000-acre ranch near Saugus, in the northwestern part of Los Angeles County, which is now next door...

52. Henry Jones

Actor | Vertigo

Henry Burk Jones was born in New Jersey and raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Helen (Burk) and John Francis Xavier Jones, and the grandson of Pennsylvania Representative Henry Burk, a Prussian immigrant. He graduated from St. Joseph's College. His Broadway debut was in 1938 in ...

53. Neville Brand

Actor | Stalag 17

Neville Brand joined the Illinois National Guard in 1939, bent on a career in the military. His National Guard unit was activated into federal service shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. It was while he was in the army that he made his acting debut, in Army training films, ...

54. Howard McNear

Actor | The Andy Griffith Show

Although Los Angeles native Howard McNear had a long career on radio and in films, he will forever be remembered for his memorable - and scene-stealing - portrayal of Floyd the Barber in the long-running The Andy Griffith Show (1960) (actor Don Knotts once said that playing Floyd wasn't much of a ...

55. Marvin Kaplan

Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Marvin Kaplan was born on January 24, 1927 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), Wild at Heart (1990) and The Great Race (1965). He was married to Rosa Felsenburg. He died on August 25, 2016 in Tarzana, California, USA.

56. Fred Clark

Actor | Sunset Blvd.

This popular, baggy-eyed, bald-domed, big lug of a character actor had few peers when called upon to display that special "slow burn" style of comedy few others perfected. But perfect he did -- on stage, film and TV. In fact, he pretty much cornered the market during the 50s and 60s as the dour, ...

57. Thomas Mitchell

Actor | Stagecoach

Thomas Mitchell was one of the great American character actors, whose credits read like a list of the greatest American films of the 20th century: Lost Horizon (1937); Stagecoach (1939); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); Gone with the Wind (1939); It's a ...

58. Basil Hoffman

Actor | The Box

Basil Hoffman was an American character actor, known for his work, often in classic films, with distinguished film directors including Peter Bogdanovich, Mario Monicelli, Richard Benjamin, Carl Reiner (twice), Peter Medak (five times) and Alan J. Pakula (twice); Academy Award winners Ethan and Joel...

59. Peter Stormare

Actor | Fargo

Peter Stormare was born in Arbrå, Gävleborgs län, Sweden, to Gunhild (Holm) and Karl Ingvar Storm. He began his acting career at the Royal National Theatre of Sweden, performing for eleven years. In 1990 he became the Associate Artistic Director at the Tokyo Globe Theatre and directed productions ...

60. Arthur O'Connell

Actor | Anatomy of a Murder

Though stage, screen and TV veteran Arthur O'Connell was born in New York City (on March 29, 1908), he looked as countrified as the American Gothic painting or Mom's home-made apple pie. Looking much more comfy in overalls than he ever could in a tuxedo, he would find an equally comfortable niche ...

61. Edward Binns

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Gravel-voiced, authoritative American character actor, a reliable presence on screen for more than four decades.

Edward Thomas Binns was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Esther (Bracken) and Edward Thoms Binns. His family were Quakers. He was a graduate of Pennsylvania State University and ...

62. Robert Webber

Actor | The Dirty Dozen

Over his 40-year career as one of Hollywood's veteran character actors, Robert Webber always marked his spot by playing all types of roles and was not stereotyped into playing just one kind of character. Sometimes he even got to play a leading role (see Hysteria (1965)). Webber first started out in...

63. Roberts Blossom

Actor | Escape from Alcatraz

Roberts Blossom was a marvelously quirky, talented, and versatile character actor who was especially adept at portraying cantankerous old oddballs. Born in 1924 in New Haven, Connecticut, Blossom graduated from the prestigious Asheville School in 1941 and attended Harvard. Roberts initially planned...

64. David White

Actor | Bewitched

American stage actor who appeared frequently on television and occasionally but impressively in films. A Marine Corps veteran of the Second World War, he worked on Broadway and on tour in stage productions after the war. In the late 1950s, he became an increasingly familiar face on American ...

65. Norman Bartold

Actor | Westworld

Norman Bartold was born on August 6, 1928 in Berkeley, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Westworld (1973), Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) and The California Kid (1974). He was married to Sheila Bartold and Mary Virginia Bartold. He died on May 28, 1994 in Rancho Mirage, ...

66. John Vernon

Actor | National Lampoon's Animal House

John Vernon was a prolific stage-trained Canadian character player who made a career out of convincingly playing crafty villains, morally-bankrupt officials and heartless authority figures in American films and television since the 1960s. Vernon was directed by some stellar filmmakers, including ...

67. Seymour Cassel

Actor | Rushmore

Seymour Cassel, the veteran character actor who was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as the hippie swinger Chet in John Cassavetes' Faces (1968), studied acting at the American Theatre Wing and at the Actors Studio. He made his movie debut in Cassavetes' first film, Shadows ...

68. Billy Curtis

Actor | High Plains Drifter

Diminutive American actor Billy Curtis avoided the usual onus of freak-show employment as a youth, opting for a mainstream job as a shoe clerk. Encouraged by stock company actress Shirley Booth to take a little person role in a stage production, Curtis soon became a professional actor, with ...

69. Mitchell Ryan

Actor | Grosse Pointe Blank

American character actor born in Cincinnati and raised in Louisville, Mitchell Ryan was a well known supporting actor in films and television. Joined the Navy in 1951 at age 17 and was later assigned to the Special Services Entertainment and became hooked on acting. After his term in the Navy, he ...

70. Michael Parks

Actor | Red State

Michael Parks is known as an actor's actor by his peers with a breadth of astonishing range that has allowed him to portray stunning contrasts--sometimes in the same film, like in Tusk (2014), starring in dual roles as an erudite serial killer opposite Justin Long, and as a feeble rube opposite ...

71. Ralph Meeker

Actor | Paths of Glory

Burly American character actor Ralph Meeker first acted on stage at his alma mater, Northwestern University, alongside other budding performers Charlton Heston and Patricia Neal. He graduated as a music major because his dean had discouraged him from pursuing a theatrical career. Ignoring that ...

72. Clifton James

Actor | Live and Let Die

Blustery, stocky, loud although often genial character actor who has created a niche for himself playing often frustrated and fast talking Southern characters... most noticeably as Sheriff J.W. Pepper alongside Roger Moore in the James Bond adventures Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man with the ...

73. Bernie Casey

Actor | Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure

Bernie Casey was born on June 8, 1939 in Wyco, West Virginia, USA. He was an actor and director, known for Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure (1989), Never Say Never Again (1983) and Revenge of the Nerds (1984). He was married to Paula. He died on September 19, 2017 in Los Angeles, California, ...

74. Paul Koslo

Actor | The Omega Man

Lean-faced, intense-looking, German-born, Canada-raised Paul Koslo was at his busiest during the 1970s, usually playing shifty, untrustworthy and often downright nasty characters. He first broke into films at age 22 in the low-budget Little White Crimes (1966), and then appeared in a rush of movies ...

75. Paul Lynde

Actor | Bye Bye Birdie

Paul Lynde was born in 1926 in Mount Vernon, Ohio (one of six children and the middle of four boys). His father was a local police officer and the sheriff of the Mount Vernon Jail for two years. Lynde got his inspiration to become an actor at the age of four or five after his mother took him to see...

76. Edward Everett Horton

Actor | Arsenic and Old Lace

It seemed like Edward Everett Horton appeared in just about every Hollywood comedy made in the 1930s. He was always the perfect counterpart to the great gentlemen and protagonists of the films. Horton was born in Brooklyn, New York City, to Isabella S. (Diack) and Edward Everett Horton, a ...

77. Hayden Rorke

Actor | When Worlds Collide

Hayden Rorke was best known as the ever suspicious "Dr. Alfred E. Bellows" on the 1960s TV series, I Dream of Jeannie (1965). Born in Brooklyn, New York, Rorke was educated at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and he began his stage career in the 1930s with the Hampden Theatrical Company. A ...

78. Burt Mustin

Actor | The Twilight Zone

Burt Mustin was a salesman most of his life, but got his first taste of show business as the host of a weekly radio variety show on KDKA Pittsburgh in 1921. He appeared onstage in "Detective Story" at Sombrero Playhouse in Phoenix Arizona, and played the janitor in the movie version, (Detective ...

79. Pat Morita

Actor | The Karate Kid

Abundantly busy and much-loved Asian-American actor who became an on-screen hero to millions of adults and kids alike as the wise and wonderful Mr. Miyagi in The Karate Kid (1984), the sparkling Noriyuki Morita was back again dishing out Eastern philosophy and martial arts lessons for The Karate ...

80. Henry Gibson

Actor | Nashville

Henry Gibson was born on 21 September 1935 in Germantown, Pennsylvania. Before appearing in films and television series, he was a child star on the stage during the 1940s and during the late 1950s he was an intelligence officer in the U.S. Air Force. His screen debut came in 1963 when he was cast ...

81. S.Z. Sakall

Actor | Casablanca

Hungarian-born S.Z. Sakall was a veteran of German, Hungarian and British films when he left Europe because of the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi movement. In Hollywood from shortly after the outbreak of World War II, Sakall began appearing in comedies and musicals, often playing a lovable if ...

82. James Whitmore

Actor | The Shawshank Redemption

Born on October 1, 1921, in White Plains, New York, gruff veteran character actor James Whitmore earned early and widespread respect with his award-winning dramatic capabilities on Broadway and in films. He would later conquer TV with the same trophy-winning results.

The son of James Allen Whitmore ...

83. Brion James

Actor | Blade Runner

Brion James was born February 20, 1945, in Redlands, California, to Ida Mae (Buckelew) and Jimmy James. The family soon moved to Beaumont, California (between Los Angeles and Palm Springs), where his parents built and operated a movie theater, where stars such as Gene Autry would occasionally stop ...

84. Brian Keith

Actor | The Parent Trap

Son of character actor Robert Keith and stage actress Helena Shipman. He grew up on the road with his parents while they toured in plays. First appeared at age 3 in film Pied Piper Malone (1924) with his father. Began acting in radio programs and on stage before World War II. Joined the Marines and ...

85. Fred Gwynne

Actor | My Cousin Vinny

Fred Gwynne was an enormously talented character actor most famous for starring in the television situation comedies Car 54, Where Are You? (1961) (as Officer Francis Muldoon) and The Munsters (1964) (as the Frankenstein clone Herman Munster). He was very tall at 6'5" and had a resonant, baritone ...

86. Robert Morley

Actor | The African Queen

Bushy-browed, triple-chinned and plummy-voiced English actor and raconteur of wide girth and larger-than-life personality. The son of a career army officer, Morley was expected to join the diplomatic corps. As a 'compromise', he tried his hand as a beer salesman. However, bitten by the acting bug ...

87. Dick Shawn

Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

One-of-a-kind comedian Dick Shawn was as intriguingly clever and off-the-wall as they came. As such, he proved to be rather an acquired taste on film and TV. A counterculture favorite far ahead of his time, it became a hit-and-miss effort in proper vehicles for this man's eccentric genius. He ...

88. Edward Andrews

Actor | Sixteen Candles

The son of a Georgia minister, Edward Andrews debuted on stage in 1926 at age 12 and by 1935 had landed on Broadway. A solid character actor, his large physique and amiable demeanor made him a natural for the jovial, grandfatherly type or genial, small-town businessman which he often played, but ...

89. James Remar

Self | Sex and the City: A Farewell

James is a rugged, intense character player with leading man good looks. Having first gained recognition in 1979 as Ajax, in his second film, The Warriors (1979). That same year he garnered acclaim on Broadway with Richard Gere in the concentration camp drama "Bent".

In a career spanning nearly four...

90. Christopher McDonald

Actor | Thelma & Louise

Christopher McDonald was born and raised in New York City, New York, to Patricia, a real estate agent, and James R. McDonald, an educator. His breakout role was in Ridley Scott's Thelma & Louise (1991), followed shortly by his role as Jack Barry in Robert Redford's Quiz Show (1994). Other ...

91. Robert Tessier

Actor | Hard Times

Actor and stuntman Robert Tessier was born of Algonquian Indian descent on June 2, 1934 in Lowell, Massachusetts. He specialized in tough, menacing villains throughout American cinema of the 1970s and 1980s. Tessier had served time in the United States Armed Forces seeing action in Korea as a ...

92. Steve Buscemi

Actor | Fargo

Steve Buscemi was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Dorothy (Wilson), a restaurant hostess, and John Buscemi, a sanitation worker. He is of Italian (father) and English, Dutch, and Irish (mother) descent. He became interested in acting during his last year of high school. After graduating, he moved to...

93. Richard Widmark

Actor | Kiss of Death

Richard Widmark established himself as an icon of American cinema with his debut in the 1947 film noir Kiss of Death (1947), in which he won a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award nomination as the killer Tommy Udo. Kiss of Death (1947) and other noir thrillers established Widmark as part of a new ...

94. Alastair Sim

Actor | Scrooge

The son of Alexander Sim JP and Isabella McIntyre, Alastair Sim was educated in Edinburgh. Always interested in language (especially the spoken word) he became the Fulton Lecturer in Elocution at New College, Edinburgh University from 1925 until 1930. He was invited back and became the Rector of ...

95. Eric Roberts

Actor | Runaway Train

Roberts is an Academy Award nominee for his role in Runaway Train, and a three-time Golden Globe nominee for Runaway Train, Star 80, and King of the Gypsies.

In addition, Roberts received acclaim at the Sundance Film Festival for his role in A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints and It's My Party. He ...

96. Michael Ironside

Actor | Starship Troopers

Michael Ironside has made a strong and indelible impression with his often incredibly intense and explosive portrayals of fearsome villains throughout the years. He was born as Frederick Reginald Ironside on February 12, 1950 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Ironside was a successful arm wrestler in ...

97. William Sanderson

Actor | Blade Runner

Prolific and versatile character actor William Sanderson was born on January 10, 1944, in Memphis, Tennessee. His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father was a landscape designer. William served two years in the US Army. Following his military service he attended Southern Methodist ...

98. Tracey Walter

Actor | Repo Man

Tracey Walter was born on November 25, 1947 in Jersey City, New Jersey, USA. He is an actor, known for Repo Man (1984), Batman (1989) and Conan the Destroyer (1984).

99. Charles Napier

Actor | The Silence of the Lambs

Charles Napier was born in the tiny community of Mt. Union, near Scottsville, Allen County, Kentucky, to Linus Pitts Napier, a tobacco farmer and postman, and his wife, Sara, on April 12, 1936. He attended public school in Scottsville. After graduating high school, he enlisted in the Army in 1954. ...

100. Walter Pidgeon

Actor | Forbidden Planet

Walter Pidgeon, a handsome, tall and dark-haired man, began his career studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He then did theater, mainly stage musicals. He went to Hollywood in the early 1920s, where he made silent films, including Mannequin (1926) and Sumuru (1927). ...