Actors: A Hollywood Look at Overlooked Actors is a blog about great actors most people haven’t heard of.
If you’re like me, you have found some actors that are simply amazing but they don’t get the credit that they deserve. This blog is dedicated to them and their stories. Hopefully it will give them the recognition they deserve.
These actors are “overlooked” for many reasons:
– They don’t make many movies (so you haven’t heard of them)
– They make bad movies (so you haven’t heard of them)
– They are overlooked because people like to talk about the big stars that get all of the press (so you haven’t heard of them)
The Vikings, 1958. “Kirk Douglas holds forth at the map table while Tony Curtis and Ernest Borgnine look on.”
8×10 inch silver gelatin print.
Just before the release of The Vikings in 1958, director Richard Fleischer sent photographer Frank Worth a list of requested portrait subjects for a publicity stills session. On the list were Kirk Douglas, Janet Leigh, Ernest Borgnine and Tony Curtis. The resulting images are among the most iconic from the film that saw its 50th anniversary last year.
But nowhere on the list was James Donald, who played the monk Brother Godwin in The Vikings. He is not even mentioned in Fleischer’s official production notes for the film. But there he is in this picture, standing to Borgnine’s right. A Hollywood Look at Overlooked Actors would like to give him his due.
At first glance, he appears to be someone’s assistant or stand-in with a clipboard (perhaps even Frank Worth himself). But he isn’t; he’s an actor very much in character as a Viking warrior seen during a brief scene in which Borgnine’s character challenges Douglas to a duel over Laurence Olivier’s daughter Morgana (Janet Leigh). Those who know Donald only from films like The Bridge on the
I was born in California but raised on the Internet. My father is a hacker and my mother is a professor of literature at Stanford. My parents taught me to read before I started kindergarten.
My interests are varied, but I have always had a special fondness for actors who never quite made it big, but really should have. I am particularly interested in actors who are extremely versatile and can play just about any role you give them, but don’t seem to get the chance to show off this talent very often.
This blog is dedicated to all those great actors most people haven’t heard of (or at least not heard of as such).
This blog started as a way to draw attention to great actors that aren’t as well known here in the US as they should be. I didn’t realize how many unknown actors there are. The list is endless.
I’m still sticking with international actors, but branching out from just Scandinavia to the rest of Europe and beyond. This blog is mostly about foreign film and television actors, but I also write about American indie films/actors, and about stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age.
I do not endorse any advertisers on this site, nor accept payment for promotions or advertisements.
This blog is dedicated to those actors who have been “overlooked” by the media. These are actors who started in the business and have had long careers, but never quite got their big break. They are actors that are too old for leading roles, yet still continue to work in some capacity. They’re the ones that nobody really knows, but they’re familiar faces and voices to you.
With every new post I’ll try to highlight an actor and provide a brief biography of him/her, a filmography and some links if available.
I was watching the pilot of Vikings last week, the new History Channel show about Norse marauders. I was struck by how good the show was. But I was also struck by how great one of the actors was. I had never seen him before, but he stood out from the crowd and got me thinking about why I like some actors so much and others leave me cold.
I looked up this actor on imdb, Katheryn Winnick, and she had quite a resume. She’s been in several TV shows, but nothing you would have heard of except Bones maybe. The only movie she’s been in that you might have seen is Love and Other Drugs with Jake Gyllenhaal and Anne Hathaway.
But she wasn’t bad in that movie. In fact, she was pretty good in a small part as a hospital administrator who flirts with Jake Gyllenhaal (who plays a Pfizer drug rep).
So why isn’t she famous? Probably because her talent is subtle. She’s not a flashy actress like Anne Hathaway who can do a British accent or sing Les Miserables songs or whatever. She’s just very good at playing an ordinary person convincingly. I had to look up what country she was from
One of the most overlooked actors of our time is Peter Stormare, who has the ability to play almost any role convincingly. This is a trait that many other actors lack. Many actors can only play similar roles over and over again (Tom Cruise comes to mind). In this article I’m going to talk about Peter Stormare’s greatest roles.
The first is as one of the kidnappers in Fargo. He’s calm, collected and plays his role as if he were on a shopping trip. I’ve never seen a more convincing performance from an actor. The combination of his understated performance and William H. Macy’s overstated performance creates perfect chemistry between the two characters.
The second is as the leader of the Russian Mafia in Prison Break. Even though he’s only in a few episodes, he steals every scene he’s in.
If you haven’t seen any of these movies or TV shows, get them out and watch them now! You will not be disappointed.
