I am making a botchery of the message board solely due to my ataxia with the gosh-darn internal server error messages. My most cordial regrets, Sir or Ma'am, and please retain at least this one sub-topic.

Three underrated actors, who come to mind, include Scott Bakula, Campbell Scott, and Andy Garcia.

I wouldn't delete this section. It's good that we're discussing things we like. Sometimes I get really hot under the collar when someone forgets the Guild's secondary directive about all nitpicking being in good fun.

Jeffrey Jones
Kurtwood Smith
Harris Yulin
J.T. Walsh (except he is deceased now)

Robert Urich and Gregory Harrison.

Bill Pullman, John Malkovich, Timothy Hutton, Tim Robbins (to a certain degree), Gary Oldman, Joely Richardson (The Patriot, Return to Me), John Glover, Jeroen Krabbe (The Fugitive, Immortal Beloved), Donald Sutherland (has not been having many great roles), Daniel Day-Lewis, Mary Stuart Masterson, Madeleine Stowe, Cary Elwes, Hank Azaria, Kathy Bates (same as Donald Sutherland), Jonathan Pryce, and Anthony LaPaglia.

Tim Daly, Steven Weber, Sigourney Weaver, Christopher Walken, and Linda Hamilton. And what of Wes Bentley (American Beauty, Beloved)? He is not seemingly making it, but Jason Biggs (American Pie, Loser, Saving Silverman) does have a continuous career?

Ed Harris, Kevin Kline, and Brendan Frasier.

The late Glen Corbett (the original Zephram Cochrane and Lincoln Case).

Billy Zane.

My definition of an underrated actor or actress. When you're watching the credits at the beginning, you say "Oh! ____ is in this!" The person next to you will say "Who?!" But you, the atsute film-goer, will realize that you are about to see some quality acting from at least one person in the film. To jog the ignorant boor's memory, you will resort to listing some other credits of the actor ("Remember? The Nazi in 'Casablanca?'"), which will prompt a "Ahhh..." from the neighbor.

Mark Lenard (Sarek)
DeForest Kelley (McCoy)

James Cromwell. Even in bad movies, his characters are well acted.

Lili Taylor (Dogfight, Household Saints) is long overdue for an Oscar, IMHO.

Tom Everett Scott, the Tom Hanks lookalike from the wonderful That Thing You Do!, currently on TV in Philly. An excellent (and extremely appealing) young actor with lousy instincts; he's lucky Dead Man on Campus didn't permanently kill his career!

I second the vote for James Cromwell (OK, I know we're not voting, but you know what I mean.)

That'll do, pig.

Actually, that was kind of what I had in mind...who else could have pulled off such an understated roll (especially when the main "star" was an animal)?

Oh, I agree, Craig. (AOL ALERT ) Cromwell is highly underrated. Saw him in LA Confidential, too... Good there as well.

Chasing Amy's Jason Lee should be getting nominations by now!

Ed Lauter, very reliable character actor, both in movies ("Magic") and TV (Next Gen's "The First Duty," "E.R.")
Scott Glenn-Almost stole "Urban Cowboy" right from under John Travolta's boots. Also in "The Right Stuff" and "The Silence of the Lambs."

Fred Ward, also of "The Right Stuff" (I always think of him as Gus Grissom). Just saw him again in Tremors 2. What a great character!

Andreas Katsulas (Next Gen, Babylon 5). Played a great heavy in The Fugitive and Someone To Watch Over Me.

Traci Lords.

Now, before anybody says ANYTHING, I'm more than well aware of her reputation, her history, and most of her filmography. That being said, there was this movie where she played a single mom and Tony Todd (known to TNG fans as Worf's brother Kern and also a HIGHLY underrated actor in his own right) was a cop who had to protect her from somebody. I forget who. In fact I forgot the title. Talk about a brain fart. Anyway, she was GOOD in that part! And frankly, I thought she was fairly convincing as a prison-made psychopathic serial killer wannabe on Profiler. And she's also a really, really nice person. I'm talking Tom Hanks nice here ladies and jaywalkers.

So, go ahead and let the joke fly.

According to the Oracle of Bacon, the movie was "Stir".

I concur with you, Brian. I was especially in awe of her performance in that TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers.

Or was it a different movie? I dunno. Maybe it was a different Traci Lords movie with the word "knockers" in the title. I forget.

Scott: Thank you.

Luigi: Cute. Actually I didn't like that miniseries, but in all fairness I didn't like the book either. One of my favorite The Onion articles, and aparently Stephen King liekd it too, had the following headline; "King doesn't remember writing The Tommyknockers!" and it had a 'quote' from King, "No wonder I didn't remember it. This is pretty boring."

Luigi, you just made my day. LOL

William Shatner :p

William Shatner :p

So good they posted him twice!

No idea where to post this, but I just heard that director Ridley Scott and actor Alan Bates are due to receive knighthoods in the Queen's New Year's Honours.

M. Emmet Walsh
Tracy Middendorf (recently on 24)

Don Cheadle except for his "Dick Van Dyke" style accent in Oceans 11

Timothy Spall
Joan Cusack
Nick Tate
Hugo Weaving
Eric Stoltz
Billy Connolly (no, really he is)
Rene Auberjonois
Chris Cooper (now that deserved Oscar win of his should help him...)
Andy Serkis (... though one could argue it should have gone to this man)
Martin Freeman (Tim from "The Office" but sadly outshone by Ricky Gervais)

*By the way, nothing is worse than seeing an underrated actor become so underrated that he/she becomes overrated, or as Rob Neyer calls it, the "Garret Anderson Syndrome," for you baseball fans. Luis Guzman (soon to get his own FOX show) may be crossing the line here!

Here is some more Underrated Fellas:

1. Sean Bean. Bean is really good at villains, especially semi-sympathetic/psychotic villains. He is really easy to jog someone's memory on--"006 in Goldeneye? Boromir in Lord of the Rings? The Irish bloke in Patriot Games? The meanie in Don't Say a Word?"

2. Xander Berkeley. Just got done playing George Mason on "24," but I remember him for playing lots of slimy officials, such as the Secret Service agent-gone-bad in "Air Force One" and the crooked sheriff in "Shanghai Noon." Was Hodge on the X-Files episode "Ice."

3. Alfred Molina. The absymal CBS show "Ladies Man" (followed by the equally absymal CBS show "Bram and Alice") almost destroyed Molina, but he's soon to play Dr. Octopus so that will help. Famous for playing Indy's guide in "Raiders of the Lost Ark," the Iranian husband and meanie in "Not Without my Daughter," and a host of other character roles. Loved him as the sincerely incorrect psychologist in "Identity."

4. Daniel Von Bargen. Von Bargen is not only easily noticeable, he's fun to watch. The corrupt cop in "Super Troopers." George's moronic boss on "Seinfeld." The bumbling terrorist from that X-File episode about viruses. Of course, Commandant Spangler on "Malcolm in the Middle." Sort of a kindler, gentler Kurtwood Smith.

5. Brian Cox. Cox has had a long, distinguished career. He has lately become a darn familiar face in films--the profane yet honest cop in "Super Troopers," Dennis Quaid's struggling father in "The Rookie," the haunted horse trainer in "The Ring," the writing consultant in "Adaptation," the anti-mutant fink in "X-Men 2." And those are just from the last three years! My friend and I now state during bad movies, "This needs Brian Cox."

6. Anthony Zerbe. Even in pieces of •••• films, Anthony Zerbe at least will give you a good performance. For instance, I totally disliked "Star Trek: Insurrection" and felt that F. Murray Abraham's embarassingly bad overacting was compounded thanks to Zerbe's fine underplaying as Admiral Dougherty. My only problem with Zerbe is that he just LOOKS evil; it's hard to take him seriously in "The Matrix Reloaded" as a beloved patriarch.

Ben Browder

I have to agree with Hugo, though I'm not sure he's "underrated".

Same with Cusack.

John C. Reilly

Alan Rickman

My only problem with Zerbe is that he just LOOKS evil; it's hard to take him seriously in "The Matrix Reloaded" as a beloved patriarch.

*LOL* That reminds me of when my step-grandfather told my grnadmother that Zerba had played a good guy in Reloaded. Her reaction was, and I quote, "No ••••••• way!"

Has Alan Rickman ever played a villan? The Red Dwarf Season 1 DVD suggests his was up for a part in the show, which seems quite different.

Well, he's probably best known to U.S. audiences as the lead terrorist, Hans Gruber, in Die Hard.

He also played the Sheriff of Nottingham in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.

And though he's not really a villain, per se, he plays the slimy Professor Snipes in the Harry Potter films.

That's Snape, not Snipes!

And he was great as Hans Gruber!

Whoops! See? Not a huge Potter fan here. Sorry.

Sorry missed a 'not' in a redraft, The spoof show Dead Ringers did an advert for a video of Alan Rickman's best performances, all the clips from it had him saying 'I'll get you (hero's name)'. This was supposed to come with a free copy of 'Judi Dench plays any woman's part over 50'.

Ann Robinson from the 1953 version of "The War of the Worlds" is DEFINATELY underrated.

Her emotionalism during that movie was so true to life, it was hard to tell she was acting!

1. Her panic when "Uncle Matthew" went out to communicate with the Martians.

2. Her blood-curdling scream when "Uncle Matthew" got zapped.

3. Her fear when the Martian hand touched her.

OSCAR WINNER! (IMHO)

For a fine book on the subject, check out "Hey! It's That Guy!" an adaptation of the website Fametracker.Com's feature. This features numerous profiles of character actors, although it puts in a few people that aren't really character actors anymore (James Gandolfini) and omits a few notable ones (Brian Cox!).