Stars in obscure roles

Maze Runner · May 5, 2012

I understand that my obscure could be your favorite movie that you've got memorized line for line, so we'll allow for a margin of error here. The point is just to recommend a good movie that some, most may not have seen.

De Niro in "Bang the Drum Slowly", as a dying baseball player of marginal talent.

Brad Pitt in "Johnny Suede", a campy film by Tom DiCillo. Pitt as an aspiring rock 'n roller who's mastered three or four guitar chords.

"Hud", Paul Newman. This last one may not be so obscure, but worth the stretch to point you to it in case you haven't seen it or read the novel upon which it is based, "Horseman Pass By," Larry McMurtry's debut. I'm a big McMurtry fan, but this is one time that I think the film is better than the book. Melvyn Douglas is great in this, as is Patricia Neal. In the novel, Hud is almost a minor character, in the film Newman's characterization of a fully matured bad seed, with nearly no redeeming qualities takes center stage.

Got any we may have not seen that we should?

LongWave · May 7, 2012

Good question. I know I've got a few, but Im drawing a blank right now aside from Brad Pitt in True Romance. Actually, there are several actors in True Romance that are "stars" that had small rolls -- Gary Oldman, James Gandolfini, Dennis Hopper, and Christopher Walken. OH! And Val Kilmer is in it too, but you really never see him with clarity.

Alessandra Kelley · May 7, 2012

Jim Carrey in "Earth Girls Are Easy," one of his best rôles, in my opinion (he has a lot of screen time but never says anything).

Nicolas Cage in "Valley Girl."

dclary · May 7, 2012

Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt in that movie they made together. No, not that one. I'm referring, of course, to Liam Neeson and Patrick Swayze's "Next of Kin"

Jess Haines · May 7, 2012

Earth Girls Are Easy is such a great movie!

I loved Denzel Washington in Book of Eli. Just saw it for the first time recently, and was very surprised I hadn't heard more about the movie before. It was very well done. Denzel and Gary Oldman both did a fantastic job in their respective roles.

dirtsider · May 7, 2012

Burn Gorman in Bleak House. (He played Owen in the first two seasons of Torchwood.) The whole cast is wonderful but I can't see anyone else as Guppy but him. He did a great job in portraying Guppy as alternatively creepy, sweet, and a conniving up-n-coming law clerk.

Ken · May 7, 2012

... it's funny, but I always look at credits in movies to see if I recognize any big actors in obscure roles and I never see any. Playing an obscure role in a movie dooms an actor to forever play obscure roles as it seems and vice versa. A lesson to any aspiring actor out there, if you want to attend to my limited opinion on the matter, which I strongly advise ;-)

areteus · May 7, 2012

Christopher Lee in Burke and Hare. He is on screen for very little time...

Celia Cyanide · May 7, 2012

Ken said:
... it's funny, but I always look at credits in movies to see if I recognize any big actors in obscure roles and I never see any. Playing an obscure role in a movie dooms an actor to forever play obscure roles as it seems and vice versa. A lesson to any aspiring actor out there, if you want to attend to my limited opinion on the matter, which I strongly advise ;-)

When you say "obscure roles" do you mean smaller roles in bigger films? I think the OP meant lesser known movies with actors who are now stars. And just about every actor has at least one movie they made before they were that famous that no one remembers.

I found this one recently:

http://filmzillampls.blogspot.com/2012/05/final-cut-1998.html

It's called FINAL CUT, and it stars Jude Law and Ray Winstone. It was entirely improvised. It's very rare, not available on netflix. I quite liked it.

SirOtter · May 7, 2012

areteus said:
Christopher Lee in Burke and Hare. He is on screen for very little time...

Lee also had a small part in Captain Horatio Hornblower. He's the Spanish ship's captain who loses a swordfight to Gregory Peck, which is a pretty remarkable display of deliberately bad fencing.

Jim Carrey was in the last Dirty Harry movie, The Dead Pool. And of course, Dirty Harry his own self, Clint Eastwood, had a tiny role in Revenge of the Creature.

DeNiro, BTW, had a cameo in Brazil.

Maze Runner · May 7, 2012

Celia Cyanide said:
When you say "obscure roles" do you mean smaller roles in bigger films? I think the OP meant lesser known movies with actors who are now stars. And just about every actor has at least one movie they made before they were that famous that no one remembers.

I found this one recently:

http://filmzillampls.blogspot.com/2012/05/final-cut-1998.html

It's called FINAL CUT, and it stars Jude Law and Ray Winstone. It was entirely improvised. It's very rare, not available on netflix. I quite liked it.

Yeah, that's what I meant, thanks. That, and the occasional small movie an established star does, not for the money but the art. It happens.

Any performance by a known actor that you think many might not have seen, but should.

Peter Boyle, before Young Frankenstein, before Everybody loves Raymond, did a movie called Joe, where he played an Archie Bunker type character but with dire consequences for a guy he meets in a NYC bar who enlists his assistance to help find his wayward, hippie daughter.

Al Pacino post Godfather I, in a film called Scarecrow with Gene Hackman.

Sean Penn in an Oliver Stone film, U Turn with Jennifrer Lopez and Nick Nolte, also with Claire Danes and Joaquin Phoenix in small but memorable parts.

How 'bout Sean Penn in

theichibun · May 7, 2012

John Stewart had a guest spot on The Nanny. I didn't watch the show much, but he brought it up on The Daily Show a week or so ago.

Celia Cyanide · May 7, 2012

Bebop said:
How 'bout Sean Penn in

in...???

ajoker · May 7, 2012

Helen Hunt was also in a spectacular sci-fi series of movies called Trancers in the mid 80's.

SirOtter · May 7, 2012

Sean Connery was one of the bad guys in a late 50s Tarzan picture, with Gordon Scott as Tarzan. The producers wanted him to come back for another, but he had to beg off because of some spy picture he was supposed to do instead.

Celia Cyanide · May 7, 2012

Jack Nicholson was in the Monkees movie, HEAD. He cowrote it, too.

J.S.F. · May 7, 2012

I think you're talking about Tarzan's greatest adventure, which came out in 1959. Good movie, but Tarzan the Magnificent was better, basically because of a pretty vicious hand-to-hand fight at the end. Dr. No came out in 1962, so maybe Sean Connery did another spy picture in between....

shawkins · May 8, 2012

Matthew McConaughey chased Renee Zellweger around with a chainsaw in Texas Chainsaw massacre part IV. That really has to be seen to be believed.

Edward Norton played the leper king in Kingdom of Heaven. You never saw his face.

Maze Runner · May 8, 2012

Celia Cyanide said:
in...???

Ha! Sorry Celia, was rushing out the door last night.

I'm not sure which one I was going to recommend, Bad Boys or At Close Range. Both great movies, both after Fast Times. Bad Boys he plays an incarcerated delinquent- Close Range with Penn's brother, and Walken as his estranged father, the head of a rural PA theft ring. This is really a great movie in which Penn shows his range before anyone knew he had one.

SirOtter · May 8, 2012

J.S.F. said:
I think you're talking about Tarzan's greatest adventure, which came out in 1959. Good movie, but Tarzan the Magnificent was better, basically because of a pretty vicious hand-to-hand fight at the end. Dr. No came out in 1962, so maybe Sean Connery did another spy picture in between....

Agreed on Tarzan the Magnificent being the better of the two, and maybe the best Tarzan after the first few Weismullers. I believe it was one of the Jock Mahoney Tarzans they wanted him to come back for, but Dr. No was already in production, IIRC, or was going to be before the Tarzan picture wrapped.

SirOtter · May 8, 2012

Celia Cyanide said:
Jack Nicholson was in the Monkees movie, HEAD. He cowrote it, too.

Victor Mature was in it, too.

SirOtter · May 8, 2012

Robert Mitchum got his start playing the villains in a couple of Hopalong Cassidy westerns.

Gary Cooper's breakout role was as a doomed WWI fighter pilot in Wings. He's only on screen a minute or so, but is about the best thing in the picture. Not that it's a bad film, but he's just that much better than the leads. I'm not sure he contributed that much to the movie winning the first best picture Oscar, but he didn't do the film any harm.

Before Myrna Loy became Nora Charles in The Thin Man and, later, Hollywood's favorite mom, she played a string of villainous roles, particularly when the script called for a vaguely Oriental femme fatale. She was Fah Lo Suee to Boris Karloff's Fu Manchu in 1932.

Joan Crawford got her first major role in a Lon Chaney horror picture, The Unknown.

The Three Stooges played firemen in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.

Richard Widmark got his start in radio, as did Tony Randall; Widmark in Lights Out, Randall as Reggie in I Love a Mystery.

Maze Runner · May 8, 2012

Four stars in a relatively obscure film, Margot at the Wedding.

Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Jack Black and John Turturro, all great in this, though the two ladies as sisters with a lot of baggage stand out. If you haven't seen it, it's definitely worth a look.

The trailer makes it look lighter than it is. Good psychological fare.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NQobRrZhvo

Stars in obscure roles

Maze Runner

LongWave

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

dclary

Unabashed Mercenary

Jess Haines

Boldly going nowhere in particular.

dirtsider

Not so new, really

Ken

areteus

Celia Cyanide

Joker Groupie

SirOtter

Il Cavaliere Marino

Maze Runner

theichibun

Needs to write more and think less

Celia Cyanide

Joker Groupie

ajoker

backstab x 2!

SirOtter

Il Cavaliere Marino

Celia Cyanide

Joker Groupie

J.S.F.

Red fish, blue fish...

shawkins

Ahhh. Sweet.

Maze Runner

SirOtter

Il Cavaliere Marino

SirOtter

Il Cavaliere Marino

SirOtter

Il Cavaliere Marino

Maze Runner