Quite a Character

1. Gene Lockhart

Gene Lockhart was born on July 18, 1891, in London, Ontario, Canada, the son of John Coates Lockhart and Ellen Mary (Delany) Lockhart. His father had studied singing and young Gene displayed an early interest in drama and music. Shortly after the 7-year-old danced a Highland fling in a concert ...

2. Howard Freeman

Actor | The Snake Pit

With many years' experience on the stage, reliable character actor Howard Freeman entered the film industry in 1942. In a career lasting 23 years, the heavyset actor specialized in portraying oily businessmen, pompous government officials (as in The Snake Pit (1948)), gruff fathers or neighborhood ...

3. Harry Hayden

Actor | The Velvet Touch

Harry Hayden was born on November 8, 1882 in Nova Scotia, Canada. He was an actor, known for The Velvet Touch (1948), Two Sisters from Boston (1946) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). He was married to Lela Bliss. He died on July 24, 1955 in West Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California, USA.

4. Guy Kibbee

Actor | Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

Beginning his show business career at age 13 as an entertainer on Mississippi riverboats, Guy Kibbee graduated to the legitimate stage and spent many years in the theater. In the 1930s he was signed by Warner Brothers, and became part of what was known as "the Warner Brothers Stock Company", a ...

5. 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 ...

6. 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 ...

7. Moroni Olsen

Actor | Mildred Pierce

Even his more courteous, somewhat friendlier types gave one pause for concern. The tall, beefy, balding, icy-eyed character actor Moroni Olsen was one of Hollywood's more popular and imposing performers of film during the late 1930s, 1940s and early 1950s.

The versatile player was born Moroni Olsen ...

8. Paul Harvey

Actor | Spellbound

Paul Harvey was born on September 10, 1882 in Sandwich, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Spellbound (1945), Calamity Jane (1953) and Algiers (1938). He was married to Merle Stanton and Ottye Henrietta Cramer (actress). He died on December 15, 1955 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

9. May Robson

Actress | A Star Is Born

Born Mary Jeanette Robison. She was the youngest daughter of Henry Robison of Penrith, Cumberland, England and Julia Schelesinger of Liverpool, Lancashire, England. Her father died in 1860 and her mother remarried. In 1866/67 they were living in St Kilda, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia and moved ...

10. Jessie Ralph

Actress | Captain Blood

Jessie Ralph was a sailor's daughter, who first came to the stage at the age of 16, performing with a stock company in either Boston, Massachusetts, or Providence, Rhode Island (accounts differ). The year was 1880, and it took Jessie another 26 years to make her debut on the Great White Way in "The...

11. Leon Ames

Actor | Peggy Sue Got Married

Leon Ames was born Harry Wycoff in Portland, Indiana, to Cora Alice (DeMoss) and Charles Elmer Wycoff. He had always wanted to be an actor and he did it the hard way, serving a long apprenticeship in touring amateur theatre companies -- even selling shoes for a while on 42nd Street in the 1920s. It...

12. Michael Bates

Actor | A Clockwork Orange

Michael Bates was born on December 4, 1920 in Jhansi, United Provinces of Agra and Oudh, British India. He was an actor, known for A Clockwork Orange (1971), Frenzy (1972) and Patton (1970). He was married to Margaret M. J. Chisholm. He died on January 11, 1978 in Chelsea, London, England, UK.

13. John Qualen

Actor | Casablanca

One of the best and most familiar character actors of the first four decades of sound films, although few who knew his face also knew his name, John Qualen was born in Canada to Norwegian parents. His father was a minister. The family moved to the United States and Qualen (whose real name was ...

14. Reta Shaw

Actress | Mary Poppins

Reta Shaw is best known to television audiences as Hope Lange's housekeeper in the TV series The Ghost & Mrs. Muir (1968). Disney fans will remember her as one of the singing domestics in the Oscar-winning masterpiece Mary Poppins (1964). While she never achieved stardom as a leading lady, she ...

15. Jean Hagen

Actress | Singin' in the Rain

Jean Shirley Verhagen (later shortened to Hagen) was born in Chicago, Illinois on August 3, 1923. Her father was a Dutch immigrant. Hagen and her family moved to Elkhart, Indiana when she was twelve; she subsequently graduated from Elkhart High School. Afterwards, she graduated from Northwestern ...

16. Mercedes McCambridge

Actress | Giant

Mercedes McCambridge was a highly talented radio performer who won a best supporting Actress Oscar for her film debut.

Mercedes McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, to Marie (Mahaffry) and John Patrick McCambridge, a farmer. She was of mostly Irish (with a small amount of English and German) ...

17. Jo Van Fleet

Actress | East of Eden

Jo Van Fleet was born on December 29, 1915 in Oakland, California. She established herself as a notable dramatic actress on Broadway over several years, winning a Tony Award in 1954 for her skill in a difficult role, playing an unsympathetic, even abusive character, in Horton Foote's "The Trip to ...

18. Hobart Cavanaugh

Actor | A Letter to Three Wives

Worried-looking, balding, moustachioed and usually bespectacled small part character actor, prolific during the 1930s and 40s. Hobart Cavanaugh played downtrodden or henpecked little men -- the perennial victim, forever nervous or bewildered -- to absolute perfection. He was most at home as clerks,...

19. Byron Foulger

Actor | Sullivan's Travels

One of those wonderfully busy character actors whose face is familiar if not his name, mild-mannered actor Byron Foulger began performing with community theater, and stock and repertory companies after graduating from the University of Utah. He met his future wife, character actress Dorothy Adams, ...

20. Howard Smith

Actor | Death of a Salesman

Howard Smith was born on August 12, 1893 in Attleboro, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Death of a Salesman (1951), Kiss of Death (1947) and Don't Go Near the Water (1957). He was married to Mildred A. Barker and Lillian Boardman. He died on January 10, 1968 in Hollywood, California, ...

21. Howard St. John

Actor | Born Yesterday

A veteran theater performer from 1925, Chicago-born character actor Howard St. John excelled in blustery, unsympathetic roles -- often pompous, often shifty and usually self-important. He made his Broadway debut with "Nocturne" (1925) and continued reliably into the 30s with parts in "Princess ...

22. Paul Hartman

Actor | Higher and Higher

Rubber-limbed American dancer, vaudevillian and character actor, whose roots were steeped in show business. Paul's impresario father, Ferris Hartman, was known by the sobriquet "the Ziegfeld of the Pacific Coast." Between 1917 and 1921, he also worked as a silent film director for Triangle out of ...

23. Dort Clark

Actor | Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask

Dort Clark was born on October 1, 1917 in Wellington, Kansas, USA. He was an actor, known for Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex * But Were Afraid to Ask (1972), Bells Are Ringing (1960) and Wonderful Town (1958). He was married to Marilyn Sable. He died on March 30, 1989 in Wellington,...

24. Woodrow Parfrey

Actor | The Outlaw Josey Wales

Parfrey was born Sydney Woodrow Parfrey in New York City, New York, to Hazel (James) and Sidney Parfrey, both Welsh immigrants. One of the most interesting character actors to emerge on American film and television in the 1960s, Parfrey brought a quirky charisma to every role he played, from ...

25. Zasu Pitts

Actress | Greed

Classic comedienne Zasu Pitts, of the timid, forlorn blue eyes and trademark woebegone vocal pattern and fidgety hands, was born to Rulandus and Nellie (Shay) Pitts, the third of four children on January 3, 1894. Her aged New York-native father, who lost a leg back in the Civil War era, had settled...

26. Charles Halton

Actor | To Be or Not to Be

A respected stage actor -- he trained at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts -- since the 1920s, birdlike Charles Halton's thinning hair, rimless glasses and officious manner were familiar to generations of moviegoers. Whether playing the neighborhood busybody, a stern government bureaucrat or ...

27. Clarence Wilson

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

Clarence Wilson was born on November 17, 1876 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for You Can't Take It with You (1938), The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) and Penguin Pool Murder (1932). He died on October 5, 1941 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

28. Chester Clute

Actor | Arsenic and Old Lace

Chester Clute was born on February 18, 1891 in Orange, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), Too Many Girls (1940) and Television Spy (1939). He was married to Eleanor Hicks. He died on April 2, 1956 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

29. Eve Arden

Actress | Our Miss Brooks

Eve Arden was born Eunice Mary Quedens in Mill Valley, California (near San Francisco), and was interested in show business from an early age. At 16, she made her stage debut after quitting school to join a stock company. After appearing in minor roles in two films under her real name, Eunice ...

30. Lionel Jeffries

Actor | Chitty Chitty Bang Bang

With his bald head, firm jawline and bristling moustache, Lionel Jeffries played a nice line of English eccentrics. This belied his RADA training. Following military service in WWII, he played his major roles - everything from Grandpa Potts in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968) to the Marquis of ...

31. Oscar Homolka

Actor | The Seven Year Itch

Because of his heavy generically "European" accent and Slavic-sounding surname (not an uncommon one among Czechs or Slovaks), many people assumed Oscar Homolka was Eastern European or Russian. In fact, he was born in Vienna (then Austria-Hungary), the multicultural capital of a large multi-ethnic ...

32. Olin Howland

Actor | Them!

Olin Howland had a career in movies which stretched from the 20s, up through the time he passed away, in the late 50s. After a few attempts at films in the silent era, Olin began to appear regularly in the sound pictures of the 1930s. His roles were usually in mysteries and dramas, and he became a ...

33. Charles Coburn

Actor | The More the Merrier

A cigar-smoking, monocled, swag-bellied character actor known for his Old South manners and charm. In 1918 he and his first wife formed the Coburn Players and appeared on Broadway in many plays. With her death in 1937, he accepted a Hollywood contract and began making films at the age of sixty.

34. Agnes Moorehead

Actress | The Magnificent Ambersons

Agnes was born of Anglo-Irish ancestry near Boston, the daughter of a Presbyterian minister (her mother was a mezzo-soprano) who encouraged her to perform in church pageants. Aged three, she sang 'The Lord is my Shepherd' on a public stage and seven years later joined the St. Louis Municipal Opera ...

35. Laura Hope Crews

Actress | Gone with the Wind

Laura Hope Crews was born on December 12, 1879 in San Francisco, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Gone with the Wind (1939), The Silver Cord (1933) and Camille (1936). She died on November 13, 1942 in New York City, New York, USA.

36. Harry Davenport

Actor | Gone with the Wind

Character fame on film came quite late for long-time stage actor Harry Davenport at age 70, but he made up for lost time in very quick fashion with well over a hundred film roles registered from the advent of sound to the time of his death in 1949. Beloved for his twinkle-eyed avuncular and/or ...

37. Eugene Pallette

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

This eminently recognizable, bulbous, beetle-browed character actor left Culver Military Academy and began acting in repertory companies before becoming a Hollywood extra and stunt man. Eugene's father had also been a thespian at one time but eventually ended his career as an insurance salesman. In...

38. Clem Bevans

Actor | Saboteur

Born in 1879, Clem Bevans spent most of his performing career on the stage. First appearing in 1900 in a vaudeville act with Grace Emmett as a boy and girl act, he would move on to burlesque and eventually make the move to Broadway and even opera productions. His first screen appearance did not ...

39. 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).

40. 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 ...

41. Jane Darwell

Actress | The Grapes of Wrath

Missouri-born Jane Darwell was born Patti Woodard, the daughter of William Robert Woodard, president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, and Ellen (Booth) Woodard, in Palmyra, Missouri, where she grew up on a ranch . She nursed ambitions to be an opera singer, but put it off because of her ...

42. Armin Mueller-Stahl

Actor | Eastern Promises

Armin Mueller-Stahl is a German actor with a relatively long film career. He was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as an abusive father in the biographical drama "Shine" (1996).

In 1930, Mueller-Stahl was born in Tilsit, East Prussia. The town developed ...

43. Frank Orth

Actor | His Girl Friday

Orth started his career in vaudeville in 1897. He married Ann Codee who would be his wife for fifty years until her death in 1961. Together they were billed as Codee and Orth. He entered movies by making the first foreign language film shorts in sound for Warner Bros. in 1928. That started him on a...

44. Jimmy Conlin

Actor | Sullivan's Travels

Jimmy Conlin was born on October 14, 1884 in Camden, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Sullivan's Travels (1941), Calling Philo Vance (1940) and The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). He was married to Dorothy Julia Ryan, Myrtle Glass and Lillian Grace Steel (actress). He died on May 7, ...

45. Porter Hall

Actor | Sullivan's Travels

For over two decades, Porter Hall made a career out of playing villains and pompous, unpleasant people. His movie career was not a mirror of his real life, however. Mr. Hall was well known as a generous and outgoing person who was well-liked by almost everybody he knew. It is ironic that the role ...

46. Will Wright

Actor | The Blue Dahlia

One of those familiar character actors who seems to have been born old, Will Wright specialized in playing crusty old codgers, rich skinflints,crooked small-town politicians and the like. A former newspaper reporter in San Francisco, he switched careers and entered vaudeville, then took to the ...

47. Vaughan Glaser

Actor | Saboteur

Vaughan Glaser was born on November 17, 1872 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for Saboteur (1942), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and Meet John Doe (1941). He was married to Lois Landon. He died on November 23, 1958 in Van Nuys, California, USA.

48. Frank Ferguson

Actor | This Gun for Hire

American character actor Frank Ferguson appeared in scores of films and television shows, often as self-important types. Prior to his film debut, he was a prominent performer and director with the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse, where he coached numerous up-and-coming young actors such as ...

49. Isobel Elsom

Actress | My Fair Lady

The epitome of opulent, grande dame pomposity, British character actress Isobel Elsom was born Isabelle Reed in Cambridge, England on March 16, 1893. She began on the stage in 1911 and went on to grace a number of silent and sound pictures in England, marrying and divorcing director Maurice Elvey ...

50. Mabel Albertson

Actress | What's Up, Doc?

When, at 50, Mabel Albertson was given the supporting role of Mrs. Carter, young actress Aileen Stanley Jr.'s mother in a Warner Bros. Technicolor musical romance, little did she know that she was starting out a movie and TV career in which she would shine as "the ultimate haughty judgmental (often...

51. Harris Yulin

Actor | Ghostbusters II

Another one of those frustratingly nameless but omnipresent and talented faces of stage, film and TV, chameleon-like player Harris Yulin has avoided the severe stereotyping lost to many a prolific actor. Benign, balding and often bearded, Yulin off camera was a stark contrast to the tough, ...

52. Mark Margolis

Actor | Pi

Mark Margolis was an American actor who is well-known for his collaborations with film director Darren Aronofsky, particularly Pi (1998), Requiem for a Dream (2000), Noah (2014), Black Swan (2010), and The Fountain (2006). Margolis also gained notoriety for his portrayal of "Tio" Hector Salamanca ...

53. Irving Bacon

Actor | Meet John Doe

A minor character actor who appeared in literally hundreds of films, actor Irving Bacon could always be counted on for expressing bug-eyed bewilderment or cautious frustration in small-town settings with his revolving door of friendly, servile parts - mailmen, milkmen, clerks, chauffeurs, cab ...

54. 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 ...

55. Victor Wong

Actor | Big Trouble in Little China

Eccentric-looking Chinese-American actor with a slightly drooping face (the result of a bout of Bell's palsy) who studied political science, art & journalism before becoming a news reporter for a San Francisco public TV station in the late 1960s.

Apart from a brief stint in the mid-1970s on the TV ...

56. Philip Ahn

Actor | Impact

Korean-American character actor Philip Ahn played hundreds of Chinese and Japanese characters during a long career. He was born in Los Angeles in 1905 (though 1911 is the year usually given, U.S. government records confirm that Ahn was born in 1905), the son of a Korean diplomat. He attended the ...

57. Richard Loo

Actor | The Man with the Golden Gun

One of the most familiar Asian character actors in American films of the 1930s and 1940s, Richard Loo was most often stereotyped as the Japanese enemy flier, spy or interrogator during the Second World War. Chinese by ancestry and Hawaiian by birth, Loo spent his youth in Hawaii, then moved to ...

58. Keye Luke

Actor | Gremlins 2: The New Batch

Keye Luke was born in Canton, China. He grew up in Seattle, Washington, and entered the film business as a commercial artist and a designer of movie posters. He was hired as a technical advisor on several Asian-themed films, and made his film debut in The Painted Veil (1934). It seemed that he ...

59. Khigh Dhiegh

Actor | The Manchurian Candidate

Khigh Dhiegh was born on August 25, 1910 in Spring Lake, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Seconds (1966) and Noble House (1988). He was married to Mary Pearman Dickerson. He died on October 25, 1991 in Mesa, Arizona, USA.

60. Aline MacMahon

Actress | Kind Lady

Aline MacMahon was born of Scottish-Irish and Russian-Jewish ancestry on May 3,1899, the daughter of William Marcus MacMahon and Jennie Simon MacMahon. Her father became editor-in-chief of Munsey's Magazine, while her mother pursued a theatrical acting career from middle-age and lived to age107. ...

61. Ned Sparks

Actor | 42nd Street

Ned Sparks proved himself a top character support whose style would be imitated for decades to come. Although less remembered now, he was an inimitable cinematic player back in 1930s Hollywood. The nasal-toned, deadpan comedian Sparks was born Edward A. Sparkman in Guelph, Canada, and was raised ...

62. George E. Stone

Actor | Some Like It Hot

A minor prototype of the "Runyon-esque" character for more than three decades, Polish-born actor George E. Stone (né Gerschon Lichtenstein, on May 18, 1903) was, in actuality, a close friend of writer Damon Runyan and would play scores of colorful "dees, dem and dos" cronies throughout the 1920s, '...

63. Sam Levene

Actor | After the Thin Man

Sam Levene was the actor who originated "craps-shooter extraordinaire" Nathan Detroit in the seminal American musical "Guys and Dolls" on the Great White Way in the original 1950 production. Levene was not a good singer and had trouble staying in key, so his solo number "Sue Me" had to be written ...

64. Sara Allgood

Actress | How Green Was My Valley

Dublin-born Sara Allgood started her acting career in her native country with the famed Abbey Theatre. From there she traveled to the English stage, where she played for many years before making her film debut in 1918. Her warm, open Irish face meant that she spent a lot of time playing Irish ...

65. C. Aubrey Smith

Actor | Rebecca

Movie roles are sometimes based upon what the audience expects to see. If the role called for the tall stereotypical Englishmen with the stiff upper lip and stern determination, that man would be C. Aubrey Smith, graduate of Cambridge University, a leading Freemason and a test cricketer for England...

66. Robert Warwick

Actor | In a Lonely Place

A prominent matinée stage and silent-film star with handsome features offset only slightly by a prominent proboscis, Robert Warwick was born and raised in Sacramento, California, as Robert Taylor Bien. The gift of music was instilled at an early age (he sang in his church choir) and he initially ...

67. Russell Hicks

Actor | The Little Foxes

Tall, distinguished-looking Russell Hicks appeared in almost 300 films in his more than 40-year career (although his first known screen appearance was in 1915, he has screenwriting credits as early as 1913, so it's possible his screen debut was earlier than credited). His cultured bearing, ...

68. Joe Sawyer

Actor | The Petrified Forest

Joe Sawyer's familiar mug appeared everywhere during the 1930s and 1940s, particularly as a stock player for Warner Bros. in its more standard college musicals, comedies and crime yarns. He could play both sides of the fence, street cops and mob gunmen, with equal ease. He was born Joseph Sauers in...

69. Walter Sande

Actor | To Have and Have Not

Chances are you've seen his imposing character face scores of times but couldn't place the name. Colorado-born actor Walter Sande was one of those stern, heavyset character actors in Hollywood everyone recognized but no one could identify.

Born in Denver on July 9, 1906, Sande showed an early ...

70. John Doucette

Actor | True Grit

Stocky, balding American character actor with a rich, deep voice, equally adept at Western bad guys and Shakespeare. He began his career in films in minor roles, primarily as gangland henchmen, and progressed to become widely familiar as a figure in a variety of dramas and occasional comedies. ...

71. Bert Freed

Actor | Paths of Glory

During the '50s and '60s it seemed like every time you turned around, there was Bert Freed as a detective, gangster, sheriff or greedy small-town businessman, and sci-fi fans will remember him as the police chief taken over by the Martians in the classic Invaders from Mars (1953). He played a lot ...

72. Cyril Delevanti

Actor | Soylent Green

Seasoned London-born character actor, who had a lengthy career in American films and on television. The son of an Anglo-Italian music professor, Cyril also had a secondary career in Hollywood as a respected drama coach, engaged by Douglas Fairbanks, James Craig, and others. He appears to have ...

73. Erik Rhodes

Actor | Top Hat

With his slicked back hair and thin moustache Erik Rhodes arrived in Hollywood to recreate his stage role of Rudolfo Tonetti (which he had performed first on Broadway and then in London, 1932-1933) for the filming of The Gay Divorcee (1934), starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Contrary to his ...

74. Stephen Root

Actor | Barry

Stephen Root, one of today's most prolific character actors, is currently starring in HBO's hit series Barry, for which he received a Best Supporting Actor Emmy Nomination. Barry has been nominated for multiple Emmy's and Golden Globes, and has been renewed through season four. Stephen recently ...

75. Dick Miller

Actor | The Terminator

Born in the Bronx, New York to Russian Jewish immigrant parents (Isidor "Ira" and Rita Blucher Miller), Richard Miller served in the U.S. Navy for a few years and earned a prize title as a middleweight boxer. He settled in Los Angeles in the mid-1950s, where he was noticed by producer/director ...

76. 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 ...

77. Milton Kibbee

Actor | The Mad Doctor of Market Street

Milton Kibbee was born on January 27, 1896 in Roswell, New Mexico, USA. He was an actor, known for The Mad Doctor of Market Street (1942), Junior Prom (1946) and Vacation Days (1947). He was married to Lois H. Wilson. He died on April 17, 1970 in Simi Valley, California, USA.

78. Charley Grapewin

Actor | The Wizard of Oz

This old codger film favorite, born in 1869 (some reports say 1875), got into the entertainment field at an early age, first as a circus performer (aerialist and trapeze artist). When acting sparked his interest, he worked in a series of stock companies while writing stage plays that he himself ...

79. Erville Alderson

Actor | The Scarlet Empress

A character actor whose film career spanned from Hollywood's Silent Era until the 1950s. Born in Kansas City, Missouri, on September 11, 1882, Erville would start his film career in 1918 at the age of 36 in Her Man (1918). Film pioneer D.W. Griffith utilized Erville in many of his films, including ...

80. Lionel Atwill

Actor | To Be or Not to Be

Lionel Atwill was born into a wealthy family and was educated at London's prestigious Mercer School to become an architect, but his interest turned to the stage. He worked his way progressively into the craft and debuted at age 20 at the Garrick Theatre in London. He acted and improved regularly ...

81. Douglass Dumbrille

Actor | The Ten Commandments

Distinguished character villain Douglass (R.) Dumbrille, whose distinctive stern features, beady eyes, tidy mustache, prominent hook nose and suave, cultivated presence graced scores of talking films, was born on October 13, 1889, in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was first employed as a bank clerk ...

82. Cedric Hardwicke

Actor | The Ten Commandments

Sir Cedric Hardwicke, one of the great character actors in the first decades of the talking picture, was born in Lye, England on February 19, 1893. Hardwicke attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his stage debut in 1912. His career was interrupted by military service in World War I, ...

83. Glenn Shadix

Actor | Beetlejuice

William G. Scott was born in 1952 in Bessemer, Alabama. He attended Birmingham-Southern College for two years. He lived in New York City prior to moving to Hollywood in the late 1970s.

Changing his name to Glenn Shadix, he made his film debut in the poorly received The Postman Always Rings Twice (...

84. Donald Pleasence

Actor | Halloween II

Balding, quietly spoken, of slight build and possessed of piercing blue eyes -- often peering out from behind round, steel-rimmed glasses -- Donald Pleasence had the essential physical attributes which make a great screen villain. In the course of his lengthy career, he relished playing the ...

85. Alain Cuny

Actor | La dolce vita

Alain Cuny went to medical school with the intention of becoming a physician, but left to attend an arts school in Paris and became a painter. He entered the film industry as a costume and set designer for such directors as Alberto Cavalcanti and Jacques Feyder, all the time attending acting school...

86. John Malkovich

Actor | Being John Malkovich

John Gavin Malkovich was born in Christopher, Illinois, to Joe Anne (Choisser), who owned a local newspaper, and Daniel Leon Malkovich, a state conservation director. His paternal grandparents were Croatian. In 1976, Malkovich joined Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre, newly founded by his friend Gary ...

87. Eugene Roche

Actor | Soap

Adept at both comedy and drama, character player Eugene Roche (sometimes billed as Gene Roche) had an extensive four-decade career. Born in Depression-era Boston on September 22, 1928, he was the son of a Navy man.

Roche started on radio at age 15, displaying a knack for character voices, both men ...

88. Kay Medford

Actress | Funny Girl

A veteran scene stealer in the cynical tradition of Thelma Ritter and known for her own inimitably dry, poker-faced delivery, Kay Medford was born Margaret Kathleen Regan in the Bronx, New York City on September 14, 1919, the daughter of Irish folk James and Mary Regan. Her mother was, at one time,...

89. Maureen Stapleton

Actress | Reds

Academy Award-winner Maureen Stapleton was born June 21, 1925 in Troy, New York, to Irene (née Walsh) and John P. Stapleton. Her family was of Irish descent. Maureen moved to New York City at the age of eighteen and did modeling to pay the bills. Already a Tony Award-winner, she made her Academy ...

90. Margo Martindale

Actress | August: Osage County

Margo Martindale was born July 18, 1951 in Jacksonville, Texas, to Margaret (Pruitt) and William Everett Martindale, a lumber company owner and dog handler. She is the youngest of three children, and the only daughter. Margo attended Lon Marris College, and later transferred to University of ...

91. Juano Hernandez

Actor | Kiss Me Deadly

He was the son of a Puerto Rican seaman. He was self-educated and spent much of his childhood in Brazil singing on the streets to raise money for food. He became an actor after having been a circus performer, radio actor, and vaudeville performer. He worked in the chorus of the 1927 stage ...

92. Brock Peters

Actor | Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

Born of African and West Indian ancestry on July 2, 1927 in New York City, Brock Peters set his sights on a show business career early on, at age ten. A product of NYC's famed Music and Arts High School, Peters initially fielded more odd jobs than acting jobs as he worked his way up from Harlem ...

93. Rex Ingram

Actor | God's Little Acre

A Corsicana native, Rex (Clifford) Ingram was the son of Mack and Mamie Ingram. He graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in medicine before launching a brilliant acting career which spanned 50 years. Ingram made his screen debut during the silent era in Tarzan of the Apes (1918). He ...

94. Clarence Muse

Actor | Shadow of a Doubt

Clarence Muse was born on October 14, 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA as Clarence Edouard Muse. He was an actor, known for Shadow of a Doubt (1943) and The Black Stallion (1979). He was married to Irene Ena Kellman, Willabelle Burch West and Ophelia Belle Labertier. He died on October 13, 1979 in ...

95. Eddie 'Rochester' Anderson

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

The son of a minstrel and circus tightrope walker, Eddie Anderson developed a gravel voice early in life which would become his trademark to fame. He joined his older brother Cornelius as members of "The Three Black Aces" during his vaudeville years, singing for pennies in the hotel lobby. He ...

96. Paul Benjamin

Actor | The Station Agent

Born, and raised for a time, in Pelion, South Carolina, African-American actor Paul Benjamin was the youngest of twelve children of a Baptist preacher, the Reverend Fair Benjamin, and his wife Rosa. Paul lost his mother while still a baby and his father as a child. He moved to Columbia, South ...

97. Louise Beavers

Actress | Imitation of Life

1930s and 1940s film actress Louise Beavers was merely one of a dominant gallery of plus-sized and plus-talented African-American character actresses forced to endure blatant, discouraging and demeaning stereotypes during Depression-era and WWII Hollywood.

It wasn't until Louise's triumphant role in ...

98. Connie Gilchrist

Actress | Auntie Mame

With more than two decades of stage experience in France, England and on Broadway behind her, this moon-faced, heavy-set character actress first entered films in 1940. But no matter a film's genre - contemporary drama, historical costumer or shoot 'em up western - her Brooklyn roots always sounded ...

99. Kathleen Howard

Actress | It's a Gift

Kathleen Howard was born on July 27, 1884 in Clifton, Ontario, Canada. She was an actress and writer, known for It's a Gift (1934), Ball of Fire (1941) and Death Takes a Holiday (1934). She was married to Edward Kellogg Baird (lawyer). She died on August 15, 1956 in Hollywood, California, USA.

100. Judith Anderson

Actress | Rebecca

Dame Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia. She began her acting career in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. There she established herself as one of the greatest theatrical actresses and was a major star on Broadway ...