Hi, Shane! When I hear the term "character actor," I think of the non-leading roles--the supporting actors and the characters they play. Often, they are the actors who look SO familiar, because you've seen them time and time again, but you just can't think of their real name.
(
Lead actors can also be character actors. People like Tom Hanks, Hume Cronyn, Meryl Streep come quickly to mind--these are actors who get so into their roles that you forget who they really are--for a while, anyway.)
But basically, what I think of as a character actor is kind of the 9-to-5 worker. They're the bread-and-butter of the industry. They are the people who give the film its 'flesh.' They may drive an older car, live in humble surroundings, but they are ALWAYS working. It's not 2 movies a year for mega-bucks that motivates them. It's the love of acting.
Meat has said he would rather people would forget that it was him acting and remember the character he played. He's said that he loves when people come up to him and say, "That was YOU in 'Fight Club'?"
And I guess that's the goal of any 'character actor,'--to totally lose themselves in the roles and then, be remembered for the character, as opposed to the actor who played it.
But for various reasons, not all actors can achieve that goal. And ironically, the closer they are to "stardom," the harder it is for the audience to forget who is acting. One has to admire those who accomplish that time after time.
But character actors, too, can be typecast--locked into similar types of roles and that's the danger--especially when they are particularly good at portraying a certain sort of character. Think of all the actors who continually turned up in Western after Western. Or the actors whom you'd always find in Gangster films, for instance.
And for a while, after 'Roadie,' that seemed to happening with Meat--playing villains and other bad guys. He's started to break away from that, thankfully, with Bob from 'Fight Club,' the cop in 'Wishcraft'... It's such a shame that Babe Ruth didn't work out for him. It was certainly a role he was born to play and would have taken him still farther away from those 'bad guy' characters!
He has SO much more to offer than just that!!
This is how I see it, anyway.
Love,
MB
xxx