It takes a lot of work for an actor to convincingly play a character.
It's remarkable, then, when they agree to take on more than one part in a film.
Even more remarkable: These stars were somehow able to keep their extra roles and cameos
a secret… for awhile, at least.
Warwick Davis is an icon of science fiction and fantasy films.
Apart from his starring role in Willow, he's played four different characters in four different
Star Wars movies, his most famous being Wicket in Return of the Jedi.
He also had multiple roles in another beloved fantasy film franchise: the Harry Potter movies.
In seven out of the eight movies, Davis appears as Professor Filius Flitwick, professor of
Charms and head of Ravenclaw House.
"One of a wizard's most rudimentary skills is levitation, or the ability to make objects
fly."
His appearance is obscured only a little, with some glasses and a huge mustache.
Throughout the series, however, he put in additional appearances.
First, he portrayed a "Goblin Bank Teller" at the Gringotts Wizarding Bank.
He also played Griphook, an extraordinarily grumpy employee of Gringotts, but only in
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.
"You probably don't remember that you —" "That I showed you to your vault the first
time you came to Gringotts?
Even amongst goblins, you're famous, Harry Potter."
The same character was originally played by the late Verne Troyer in the Sorcerer's Stone,
with Warwick's voice dubbing his performance.
The late Kevin Peter Hall might be the most famous actor of the 1980s who was recognized
the least.
Because he was more than seven feet tall, Hall found work mostly playing movie monsters,
typically inside a heavy costume.
One notable albeit short-lived exception was his appearance in Misfits of Science, the
mid-'80s NBC series about a group of superpowered individuals.
Hall played a really tall guy who can shrink.
Go figure.
Anyway, Hall's affinity for the makeup chair brought him some pretty memorable roles: he
was Harry in Harry and the Hendersons as well as the titular bloodthirsty alien hunting
down future governors Arnold Schwarzenegger and Jesse Ventura in Predator.
The costume and makeup work on the reptilian Predator were so good that few realize the
helicopter pilot at the end of the movie was also portrayed by Kevin Peter Hall.
The more you know!
It goes without saying that Mark Hamill's fans absolutely love the guy…
"Hello, everyone!"
And despite a career that spans hundreds of credits over nearly 40 years, most of that
praise and affection comes primarily for two iconic roles: Luke Skywalker in the Star Wars
movies and the voice of the Joker in a number of animated Batman projects.
In the former, he's at the center of a timeless story of heroes and villains; in the latter,
he brings nuance and depth to what could be a one-note bad guy.
Acting in Star Wars and doing voice work are two very different disciplines, and it turns
out that Hamill has combined those two things on more than one occasion.
In addition to portraying a grizzled Luke Skywalker in 2017's The Last Jedi, Hamill
voices a character named Dobbu Scay.
That's the little alien gambler who mistakes BB-8 for a slot machine in the Canto Bight
casino.
During an exciting action sequence in Ryan Reynolds' second outing as everybody's favorite
Merc with a Mouth, Deadpool finds himself butting heads with time-traveling villain
Cable in his quest to dispatch young mutant Russell Collins.
In the ensuing chaos, Collins sets free Juggernaut, another mutant.
A big mutant.
A big, hulking, angry mutant.
"I'm gonna rip you in half now."
"That is such a juggernaut thing to say."
Juggernaut is such a massive, hulking presence that no human actor could have convincingly
portrayed the seemingly indestructible killing machine, so he's a creation of some of the
most advanced cinema CGI ever utilized.
But his voice was provided by a real guy, and it came courtesy of another actor who's
used to acting in superhero action comedies without showing his actual human face: Ryan
Reynolds himself.
After years of playing bit parts in a slew of TV shows, Canadian actor Alain Chanoine
was thrust into stardom with a major role in Suicide Squad.
He plays Incubus, one of the nastiest characters in a movie chock full of them, and works alongside
Cara Delevingne as Enchantress.
He also has a second, bit part as one of the Enchantress' Eyes of the Adversary, former
human beings transformed into eyeball-covered freaks.
According to Chanoine, different people were in charge of casting different parts of the
movie, and he scored in auditions with both groups.
Wild Wild West isn't the best movie.
In fact, let's not sugarcoat things, it's just straight-up bad.
It even won five Razzie Awards, including Worst Picture.
But it's a big, silly summer movie, featuring Will Smith at the height of his '90s superstardom
as charming Army Captain Jim West, and the magnificent comic actor Kevin Kline as West's
partner, marshal Artemus Gordon.
Even with all that good guy star power, Kenneth Branagh steals the movie as the evil Dr. Arliss
Loveless, an over-the-top caricature of a villain and a bitter, former Confederate scientist
who takes his post-Civil War revenge by kidnapping American president Ulysses S. Grant and holding
him hostage aboard his giant, steampunk robot spider.
If the actor who portrays President Grant looks familiar, he should, because he's in
most of the rest of the movie.
Under some identity-concealing prosthetics and transformative makeup, that's Kevin Kline
again, in all his presidential glory.