He's That Guy

I don't consider myself to have nearly a photographic memory but there are always actors and performances I file in the back of my mind and then come back to at some other point and realize "wow, is that the same actor who was in such and such back in the late seventies?" Somewhat a kin to a movie fan's first introduction to realizing who Rutger Hauer is and how he's that guy who seemlessly shows up in so many different things, if that makes sense.



Case in point as I was thinking about my Braveheart post and watching some of the included blu-ray extras. One of the most memorable characters in that movie is Stephen from Ireland. You remember, he's the crazy dude who claims Ireland is his island? Good stuff. Well, I'm watching the actor who played him, David O'Hara, talk about his experiences filming the movie and he looks nothing like his crazy Stephen character, and I'm thinking "I know this guy from other stuff". So I sit back and close my eyes and go through the catalog of cinematic memories in my brain. Come to find out the first thing that pops in there is a scene from The Departed where he argues with Leonardo DiCaprio over the spelling of the word "citizen's". A smile comes to my face as I place the two and realize Fitzy from The Departed is crazy Irish dude from Braveheart.



And then the cinematic rolodex continues and I pop out an immaculately dressed assassin giving himself some running room inside an office building and the sprinting into and crashing through a huge glass window as Mr. X in Wanted.



Good stuff! Not that great of a movie, but so cool matching these characters to one another. That movie needed much more of his British class and presence. For some reason those Brits excel at no-BS, well groomed killers.



In this final photo here, O'Hara's Fitzy is hanging with fellow mob mic Delahunt, played by Mark Rolston. Rolston himself is forever engrained in my memory from one of my favorite movies of all time, The Shawshank Redemption. There he plays Bogs, the lead anal rapist of Shawshank Prison. "Has anyone gotten to you yet"? shiver. Sometimes I have nightmares about that line.