Where have I Seen that Actor/Actress Before?

This past weekend I watched the movie Botany Bay, a film depicting a ship of English prisoners being deported to Australia. One of the characters, Hugh Tallant, is an American wrongly accused of highway robbery. He was a medical student, and ends up becoming the only surgeon on the ship. Tallant has to contend with the evil Captain Gilbert (who is a lot like Captain Bligh, personality wise) and the other prisoners.

All throughout the movie, I was staring at the guy who played Gilbert and wondering, "He looks SO familiar. Where have I seen this guy before?" Considering the film was made in 1953, it certainly wasn't from anything fairly recent, and if it had been, the actor would have aged considerably.

This hasn't been the only time I've though this while watching a film. I remember watching Armageddon and wondering who a specific actor was (it turned out to be Steve Buscemi). There was a creepy, sadistic doctor in the James Bond movie Tomorrow Never Dies whose face I recognized, but for the life of me, I couldn't remember his name. It turned out to be Vincent Schiavelli. Sometimes when the actor/actress is playing a role that is different from the one I saw them, it can really throw me off and have me thinking..."Where is she FROM?!" I was most of the way through the first episode of The Sarah Jane Adventures before the light bulb finally flashed on. "Ms. Wormwood is Moneypenny!" I all but shouted.

My husband was like, "What?" And I had to explain that I'd seen the actress before playing a "good guy" in "Tomorrow Never Dies" and a ruthless bad guy in "SJA".

Captain Gilbert turned out to be James Mason and I'd seen him with Cary Grant in North by Northwest and A Star is Born with Judy Garland. So, mystery solved, thanks to IMDb!

All original writing and art copyright A. Dameron 2000-2011