I love actors who not only act but also become the charector they are trying to portray.Most actors when portraying a role, will simply intergrate there own personality into the role and therefore there roles are never really any diffrent than any of there previous roles.
A charector actor is someone who shows very little of there own personality in there roles and can become a totally diffrent individual on the set. A good example is Jim Carrey in Man on the Moon, where during the filming of that movie Jim almost litterally became Andy Kaufman.
My most favorite charector actor is Gary Oldman.Gary is an astonishing actor which plays very offbeat roles and plays them tottally convincing. His three best I think are Beethoven in Immoratally Beloved, Lee Harvey Oswald in JFK, and Sid Vicious in Sid and Nancy.
My other favorites are Martin Short and Eddie Murphy.
Oh by the way if Im wrong about the diffenetion please say so.I think Im right about it but im not sure.
Post Edited (03-14-04 05:22)
Character actors are hardly ever the lead in a movie. In the old days were guys like Walter Brennan and Harry Carey Sr., Need a lovable funny old coot, get Walter Brennan. They are called character actors because they are typically indentified with a particular kind of character.
Johnny Depp...he's a good character actor.
Kurt Russell seems to disappear into his characters. Kurtwood Smith also does a good job of blending in, from a vicious killer in Robocop to a whiny business man in 12:01pm.
I secod Gary Oldman, hes a great actor, one of favourites.
Tony Shalhoub is another great character actor.
He's probably best known as Antonio the cabbie from Wings and as Adrian Monk the 'defective detective' from Monk.
I AM.
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I have the same arguement with my wife who insists that character actors are people like Tom Hanks and Johnny Depp.
As stated earlier, character actors aren't usually the lead stars of the movie. To say Johnny Depp is a good character actor is not quite acurate. He is a good lead actor that becomes emersed in his characters. Jim Carry, Daniel Day Lewis, Deniro and Jack are the same kind of actors.
I think the best character actor right now might be either Gary Sinise or Sam Elliot. These guys play the characters so well even though Elliot is a bit typecast. Props to Oldman too. I even like Ed O'Neil.
I really have to agree on Gary Oldman.
Also Sam Rockwell is a fantastic character actor.