Character Actors

Some Thoughts on Character Actors

I was thinking about the question “What is a character actor?” while watching two great stars the other night, Robert De Niro and Jane Fonda, play decidedly character roles, against type, in Robert Mulligan’s film Stanley and Iris. De Niro plays an illiterate cafeteria worker, Fonda the blue collar factory worker who teaches him to read. (Interestingly, Jane Fonda was Martin Ritt’s original choice for the blue collar role Sally Field played brilliantly in Norma Rae.) In a different era, in another film, these two characters, Stanley and Iris, could have been portrayed by what we think of as “character actors,” and have formed the subplot against which the stars of the film would have run some more formulaic, and less interesting, storyline. But nowadays the line between being a star and being a character actor is beginning to blur as films enter their second century – their third, actually. Or maybe it’s been that way for some decades now.

So what is character acting? Is it spending your career in films, hundreds of them, so that the audience finally notices you and says “Who is that guy?” instead of forming a fan club, like they do for Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant? Any actor will tell you, few become stars on the Walk of Fame, but there’s something to be said for steady work. Walter Brennan appeared in over 200 films (and that doesn’t include extensive TV work). Audiences knew who he was. Same with Tallulah Bankhead, and maybe Thelma Ritter too.

Character actors rarely win Oscars, but Ruth Gordon (whom we salute in this summer’s tribute to the character actor) did, for her exceptional performance as Minnie Castavet in Rosemary’s Baby. We’ll see her in Harold and Maude, co-starring with one of film’s strangest young character actors, Bud Cort, also known also for his roles in M*A*S*H and Brewster McCloud, Robert Altman’s first two features. Cort also ran the Bates Motel for a while in one of a number of unfortunate Psycho spinoffs. I lost track of him for some time, although he continued to work pretty consistently through the 80s and 90s. Now he has shown up again in films such as Dogma, Coyote Ugly, and Pollock, not looking like that fresh-faced kid anymore. Still a character actor, though.

One of my favorite character actors from the 1950s, 60s, 70s and 80s is Martin Balsam, who was equally at home on stage, big screen or little screen. He worked through the Golden Age of Television, appearing on virtually every live drama show, then appeared on every great TV series of the 50s and 60s. You first see him on the big screen in On the Waterfront, but you’ll see him this summer as the foreman of the jury in 12 Angry Men, and as the doomed insurance dick, Arbogast, in Psycho and O.J. Berman, Holly’s Hollywood friend in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. For more great Martin Balsam performances, see The Bedford Incident, 7 Days in May, and A Thousand Clowns. He was Archie Bunker’s partner on TV’s Archie’s Place. Now you know his name.

12 Angry Men, Sidney Lumet’s first feature, is almost a love letter to the character actor. Except for Henry Fonda, every man around that jury table is a bona fide character actor, many appearing in dozens of films, in small “who is that guy?” roles. You can look them up. Or read my article on 12 Angry Men.

Some might say they don’t make character actors like they used to. They are out there if you’re looking for them. Roberts Blossom is one that leaps to mind immediately for me – a Bay Area resident, even. And try Gail Strickland. Look them up on the Internet. See what they’ve done. Find their pictures, and you’ll say “Oh yeah! Them!”

But as I said when I started this article, something is changing, has been since the 1950s and 60s. Think of looking at a publicity still from a Greta Garbo film – you don’t think “Queen Christina” or “Anna Christie,” you think Garbo. And then you get into the transition, you get those performances or those actors, or those directors or characters, where it blurs. Look at a still from The African Queen, and it’s as if you have double-vision. Look once, and you see Katherine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart. Blink and look again. It’s Charlie Allnut and Rosie Sayer.

But as stage actors who cut their teeth on Actors Studio begin to filter into Hollywood, and writers and directors who are responding to the complexity of the changing social landscape of America (and the change in foreign films and what they reflect of the world) begin to make their mark, we see ensemble films peopled with acting unknowns – all character actors, in effect – like The Last Picture Show (1971), or we see lead actors submerge themselves in character so deeply that they, as “stars” disappear – witness Dustin Hoffman as Ratso Rizzo in Midnight Cowboy (1969).

The trend continues, wonderfully, as Hillary Swank transforms herself, and wins an Oscar in the process (Boys Don’t Cry) and some of our “stars” really are simply great character actors, who do great character roles – I particularly think of Morgan Freeman, an incredible actor who in an earlier generation would never have gained top billing in a film, and the characters he plays would always have been subplot characters. And perhaps as fallout from television, comedy characters have spun off into film, making character actors such as Mike Myers, Adam Sandler, Dana Carvey, Chevy Chase, and even Jim Carrey into the entire raison d’etre for, in some cases, unmemorable feature films – to greater economic success, perhaps, than artistic success. This brings the character actor the spotlight, turns it all full circle, from “Who was that guy who played the detective in Psycho?” to “What was that stupid movie David Spade was in?”

So have character actors gone from bottom rung on the acting feeding chain to top dog? I would argue that they have always been the necessary and much-loved glue that has held movies together, the unsung heroes even of Hollywood’s Golden Age. And not always unsung! After all, the most beloved film of all time, that 1939 Technicolor over-the-rainbow MGM musical, that starred Frank Morgan (who??): It wasn’t called Dorothy Gale, now was it?

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