Character actor

For example, Chicago character actor William Schutz's face was disfigured in a car accident when he was five years old, but his appearance after reconstructive surgery helped him to be distinctive to theater audiences.

Sometimes character actors have developed careers based on specific talents needed in genre films, such as dancing, horsemanship, acrobatics, swimming ability, or boxing.

Some character actors are known as "chameleons", able to play roles that vary wildly, such as Gary Oldman[24] and Christian Bale.

[1] Ed Lauter usually portrayed a menacing figure because of his "long, angular face", which was easily recognized in public, although audiences rarely knew his name.

[27] Character actors can play a variety of types, such as the femme fatale, gunslinger, sidekick, town drunk, villain, hooker with a heart of gold, and many others.

Actor Claude Rains (right) was sometimes a leading actor, sometimes a character actor, often cast as a sophisticated, sometimes "morally ambiguous" man. [ 1 ]
Character actress Margaret Hamilton (left) in real life was a "sweet, gentle woman" who even taught kindergarten prior to working on Broadway and Hollywood, which was different from her on-screen persona of the Wicked Witch in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz . [ 11 ]