I first noticed the actor Bill Paxton as small town police chief Dale “Hurricane” Dixon in the 1992 indie neo-noir One False Move (a very underrated indie). In two more indelible and more widely remembered performances, he played the lead role of polygamist Bill Henrickson for the five seasons of HBO’s Big Love and astronaut Fred Haise in Apollo 13.
Mary Tyler Moore, of course, is a giant of television history because of The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Mary Tyler Moore Show and all the fine shows produced by her MTM Enterprises. And her Mary Richards instantly became a societal icon. If ever anyone doubts the genius of her comic timing, they can just watch the 4-minute Chuckles the Clown funeral from the Mary Tyler Moore Show (it’s on YouTube).
She made very few movies, but they are worth remembering. She was Oscar-nominated for her still, emotionally distant parent in Ordinary People – a performance that she later said that she had modeled on her own father. She was hilarious as Ben Stiller’s mom in Flirting With Disaster. And she was also Elvis Presley’s last movie leading lady in the unintentionally funny Change of Habit, in which she played a social worker nun (!) who had to choose between her religious order and the ghetto doctor (Elvis!).
I first noticed – and was captivated by – the actor Powers Boothe as the mad cult leader Jim Jones in Guyana Tragedy: The Story of Jim Jones; this is one of the best (and scariest) movie portrayals of a historical figure. That Emmy-winning performance launched his screen career and led to another delicious role – Cy Tolliver, the cold-eyed and evil rival to Ian McShane’s cold-eyed and evil Al Swearingen in Deadwood.
Martin Landau had an acting career that spanned seven decades and resulted in 177 screen credits. His two finest performances came at age 61 and age 66 – the killer of an inconvenient mistress in Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors and his Oscar winning turn as Bela Lugosi in Ed Wood. Landau’s most famous role came when he was only 31, as he chased Cary Grant across the faces of Mount Rushmore in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest.
The actress Dina Merrill made a career of playing high society matrons (as she was in real life). She was never better in one of my favorite films, Robert Altman’s The Wedding.
The actor Stephen Furst had 88 screen credits, but none more iconic than the role in his second feature film: Kent “Flounder” Dorfman in Animal House. “Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.”
I remember the versatile actress Glenne Headly for giving Steve Martin and Michael Caine more than they can handle in the hilarious con artist movie Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. Here’s her NYT obit. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels is available on DVD from Netflix and to stream from Amazon, iTunes and Vudu.
Michael Nyqvist co-starred with Noomi Rapace in the Swedish Girl with the Dragon Tattoo movies. He was also really good in last year’s overlooked indie neo-noir Frank & Lola.
Sam Shephard was America’s greatest living playwright for decades, and also made a mark as an actor with 68 screen credits. His most memorable role was as test pilot Chuck Yeager in The Right Stuff.
Danielle Darrieux, who at age 36 played the privileged and shallow countess in Max Ophuls’ The Earrings of Madame de…, died at age 100.
Emmanuelle Riva’s 89 screen credits are spread over the past SEVEN decades. She was a fixture of the French New Wave, beginning with Alain Resnais’ Hiroshima Mon Amour in 1959. We remember her Oscar-nominated performance in 2012’s heartbreaking Alzheimer’s drama Amour.
The actor Frank Vincent gloried in mobster roles, playing characters like Johnny Big , Joey Big Ears, Tommy Tomatoes and Tommy ‘The Bull’ Vitagli. He is best known as Phil Leotardo in The Sopranos. His most memorable (and ill-fated) line was directed to Joe Pesci in Goodfellas: Go home and get your shine box….
Haruo Nakajima was the first actor to play Godzilla (before computers did that). Nakajima, who had been playing the minor bad guys dispatched by the hero in samurai movies, sweated profusely inside the rubber monster suit for twelve Godzilla films.
John Hurt’s magnificent career started in the 1960s, but I first noticed him in 1976 when he leaped out of the screen as the lethally mad Caligula when PBS broadcast the BBC miniseries I, Claudius. Hurt is probably most recognized (by my generation) for his Oscar-nominated performance as the title character in 1980’s The Elephant Man or as the first victim of the alien in Alien. But Hurt was always able to stay current with performances in popular films like V for Vendetta and Hellboy and he played Ollivander in the Harry Potter movies. He also recently made Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy (2011) and Snowpiercer (2013), and was the best thing (as The Priest) in the awful film Jackie (2016). My own favorite John Hurt performance was as the more disciplined hit man in the 1984 British neo-noir The Hit.
