Life, Writing, Weirdness

I’ve enjoyed their work in everything I’ve seen them in.

There are a surprising number of actors whose work I enjoy enough that I can say this about. I don’t always like the movies I end up watching although typically they have some redeeming qualities even if it’s just something for me to laugh at that wasn’t intended that way. But I pay a lot more attention to who’s acting in them and who’s directing them than I used to.

And because I’m paying more attention and watching at home I’m willing to look things up on my phone, I’m starting to remember names a lot more. I’ve always been better at faces, but names take some repetition for me.

John Colicos, whom I discovered as a child in the role of the not-so-vaguely orientalized Klingon Captain Kor in the first season Star Trek episode “Errand of Mercy” (he looked vastly better with the updated Klingon makeup in the three episodes of Deep Space Nine he appeared in 20 years later. I think he’s somehow know for his ability to play unhinged villains, see also Baltar in the original BSG) but he had a substantial breadth of ability and he did tend to pop up in things here and there, SF and otherwise, that were on while I was growing up.

Morgan Freeman. I’ve watched films where I’m not a fan of the lead actor just to experience the moment where Morgan Freeman shows up and explains what’s going on. Sometimes, it’s early like in Bruce Almighty, and sometimes it’s far too late to make up for the writing to that point like in Oblivion. But whenever Mr. Freeman pops into a movie, it seems the gravitas, and sometimes intensity, he brings to whatever the role is pushes up the rating of the film.

Jami Gertz, whose work I’ve enjoyed since I was just old enough to think about girls in a particular way and was dazzled by her on-screen personality in 1982’s Square Pegs. Looking her up on IMDB, she has fewer credits than I think she does, and far fewer than I think she should. Almost half of those are in the 80s, which is probably why I recognize her so easily, but I’ve watched a few things that I definitely wouldn’t have bothered with just because she was in it (Solarbabies, for example).

Lorne Greene. I did not watch Bonanza in reruns as a kid. Oh, I probably saw an episode now and then when visiting my grandparents, but Westerns have never really been my thing. I know Lorne Greene from Battlestar Galactica, the original not the unnecessarily gritty and confusing reboot from the early 2000s that lied to me before the opening credits every week (the Cylons did not have a plan because it was clear the showrunners didn’t let the writers have one). But between BSG and Lorne Greene’s New Wilderness (which for some reason isn’t in his IMDB credits), I would forever recognize his voice. I keep an eye out for his smaller roles in the 1970s and 80s.

Oh, Sid Haig’s in this? There should be a few fun scenes at least. I don’t do a lot of Horror films, and I understand he’s considered a Horror icon, but if you skim his career, he’s got a lot more breadth of credits than just the one genre. I have fond recollections of him in a couple of Saturday morning live-action kids’ shows when I was a child in the 70s. Jason of Star Command and Electra Woman and Dynagirl, but I have seen him in plenty of other things over the years. No one chewed the scenery like Sid Haig.

Meg Ryan was my favourite pairing with Tom Hanks in the 1990s, particularly in Joe Versus the Volcano, a vastly underrated film. She pops up here and there since, although not nearly often enough, and if I’m lucky enough to catch her (because I don’t do a lot of non-genre TV and movies anymore and she doesn’t seem to enter the geek world very often, or really at all because she seems to almost have been typecast into the Rom Com genre), I’m always pleased. It may be that her voice gives me some nostalgia to those 90s films, but I’m not sure that matters.

There’s a few anyway. There are plenty more. And the list will probably only grow. Very often in the last couple of years, I’ll enjoy the performance of a single actor in a relatively small part of some 70s or 80s B-movie I’m watching and pull up their career to find out what else they’ve done. While it’s good for those individual actors, I think it’s very unfortunate for the audience that Hollywood seems to want to cast the same dozen or so actors in every possible role until they’ve milked them dry. We’re likely missing a lot of really great performances as a result.

Be well, everyone.