The greatest character actor of all time, according to Alfred Hitchcock: “Marvellously understated”
The term ‘character actor’ is often misunderstood because it can mean different things to different people. Some think of it as an actor who always plays the same type of eccentric character. Within this definition, Jennifer Coolidge, Harry Dean Stanton, and Stephen Tobolowsky are three of the most recognisable and masterful of the modern era.
The other kind of character actor is that particular brand of performer who can seemingly disappear into any number of supporting roles. Although he’s more of a movie star now than a character actor, Gary Oldman was once the quintessential character actor of this description. These days, Michael Stuhlbarg and Kathryn Hahn are perhaps the pre-eminent ones.
Character actors of both definitions have been elevating cinema from the dawn of the medium. Some of the most recognisable from classic Hollywood include Thelma Ritter, Walter Brennan, Edward Everett Horton, and Ward Bond, who also happened to be John Wayne’s best friend. All of these actors were so familiar to audiences that whenever they cropped up in a movie, it was almost like seeing a family member on screen rather than a complete stranger.
Alfred Hitchcock was never known for being an actor’s director. He tended to blame them whenever a movie fared poorly with audiences and famously referred to them as ‘cattle.’ Some stars like Cary Grant adored him and believed him to be a top-notch collaborator, while others, particularly the women he worked with, found him to be harsh and even predatory.
However, like nearly every other director in Hollywood, Hitch had to hand it to the character actors he worked with. In a 1969 interview, Keith Berwick asked the Master of Suspense if he had any favourite actors, and instead of singling out a movie star like Grant, Jimmy Stewart, or Grace Kelly, he said, “There are favourite character men I’ve in the past, people like the marvellously understated Leo G Carroll, who would measure the nod or turn of the head by fractions of an inch.”
You might not know Carroll by name, but if you are a fan of Old Hollywood, you will certainly recognise his face. He appeared in six Hitchcock movies across nearly two decades – Rebecca, Suspicion, Spellbound, The Paradine Case, Strangers on a Train, and North by Northwest. As is the case with character actors, his roles were never front and centre, but he inhabited them with precision and authority. In North by Northwest, for example, he plays the head of the ‘United States Intelligence Agency’ (a fictionalised CIA or FBI) who swoops in at the eleventh hour to rescue Cary Grant’s character.
Hitchcock wasn’t the only filmmaker to showcase Carroll’s skills. The actor worked with luminaries like Vincente Minnelli, Henry Hathaway, Otto Preminger, and Douglas Sirk, and, in the 1960s, became well known for his role as Mr Waverly, the head of the U.N.C.L.E. organisation in the Man from U.N.C.L.E. franchise.
He was far from the only character actor Hitchcock worked with. Thelma Ritter appeared in Rear Window, Jessie Royce Landis appeared as Cary Grant’s mother and future mother-in-law in North by Northwest and To Catch a Thief, respectively, and Edmund Gwenn appeared in four of his films, including 1931’s The Skin Game and 1955’s The Trouble with Harry.
However, the character actor who appeared in the most Hitchcock films was Clare Greet, who appeared in seven of his films, starting with 1927’s The Ring and concluding with 1939’s Jamaica Inn, which was released the same year she died.
